Belle Vue – a park with a view

The western entrance to Belle Vue Park, Newport, South East Wales

Before I stopped working in Maesglas, on the western side of Newport, I made sure I visited nearby Belle Vue Park, which opened in 1894 and is a typical Victorian park with a pavilion and bandstand at the centre of wonderful trees, shrubs and Japanese-style plantings.

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From the non-digital archive: Garden Festival 1992

The red dragon of Wales at the Ebbw Vale Garden Festival in 1992

I can’t believe that 2017 sees the 25th anniversary of the Ebbw Vale Garden Festival that brought two million visitors to Blaenau Gwent in South East Wales.

The festival lasted six months, from May until October and transformed a derelict industrial wasteland into a blossoming landscape nearly two miles long.

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Ancient seabeds at Southerndown

Glamorgan Heritage Coast at Southerndown, seen from the viewing point in Dunraven Park on the clifftop

When I visited Dunraven at Southerndown on Christmas Day (see blog post here) I did say I would tell you some more about the cliffs of the Heritage Coast itself. So here goes.

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Festive birds and tree lichen

Robin (Erithacus rubecula) at Dunraven on Christmas Day 2016

When it’s fine on Christmas Day we often go to Dunraven Castle at Southerndown in the Vale of Glamorgan to eat pâté and pickle sandwiches in the walled garden – our main meal of roast beef and Brussels sprouts is in the evening. This year the weather was good, with a cold, brisk wind that kept the cloudy sky interesting.

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Porthcawl rock

Yellow lichen and broken red rock on the wall of Porthcawl Pier

This time last year I took lots of pictures of Porthcawl on the Glamorgan coast, one of my favourite places, but somehow I never got around to “processing” the photographs and blogging about them. Now I have put together many Porthcawl pictures into a gallery or two, but I decided to pick out in particular the images of lichen and rock on the pier.

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Inside Tredegar House

The housekeeper’s room at Tredegar House

When I posted about the gardens of Tredegar House I did say I would come back to write about the interior of the mansion in Newport, South East Wales. I’m a bit reluctant now, as my pictures are a bit sparse and badly framed, but here goes anyway.

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The Priory Church of St Mary, Usk

A winter day at the Priory Church of St Mary, Usk

On a day when winter was still cold and dank, we visited Usk in Monmouthshire. We sometimes go there for lunch at the Three Salmons Hotel, but we were early, so wandered more than usual. New to me was this little Priory Church of St Mary. New to me, but it has been there for 900 years.

Maybe it was the shade of the low winter sun, or the dark colour of the stones, but to me it looked a bit creepy, the sort of place

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Primroses on Christmas Day

Primroses in the walled garden at Southerndown, Christmas Day, 2014

It was a glorious blue-sky Christmas Day, so we went for our traditional walk at Southerndown, on Glamorgan’s Jurassic coast. Here are a few pictures of what we saw – including quite a few flowers spotted hanging on late in the season or blooming very early…

View of Southerndown as we walked down from the top car park – VERY bright sunshine!

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Dylan Thomas day is here at last

The Royal Mint at Llantrisant, here in Wales, has struck a special Alderney £5 coin to commemorate the centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth – click on the image to find out more

This year sees the centenary of the birth of wonderful Welsh writer Dylan Thomas and celebrations have been going on throughout 2014. But today, October 27, is his birthday. He was born in Swansea just after the outbreak of World War I.

Much has been written

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Can it be February fill-dyke already?

River Wye in full flow at Hay-on-Wye

Who knows where the time goes? I can’t believe it’s already February. I haven’t finished with January yet! In fact I haven’t even finished with Christmas.

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