I’ve had a quiet few days. I find walking along the coast helps to blow away the cobwebs in my mind and recharge my batteries ready for the coming season of polelathe turning, greenwood working and these days also plenty of mowing with a scythe. The Gower Peninsula just beyond Swansea in South Wales has plenty of good walking and nowhere more spectacular than the section between Port Eynon and Rhossili where the folds in the rock beds have produced amazing shapes in the cliffs interspersed with long sandy beaches.
As well as the cliff top walks for the more adventurous there are also tracks around the bottom of the cliffs which on a good day are stunning. This series of rocky headlands stretches towards the cave at Paviland, known for the discovery of the remains of the ‘Red Lady’ but which turned out to be a 33,000 year old fossilised skeleton of young man. Not red and not a lady, but the name has stuck fast and it’s still one of the oldest skeletons to be found in western europe which does show just how long people have been walking on these cliffs to blow away the cobwebs.
Some of the less tracks do go right to the edge and in places right off the edge as erosion gradually changes the shape of the coastline.
It’s all limestone cliffs here.
and even on the edge of the cliffs, sometime over the edge of the cliffs there are the remains of old industries, here lime kilns used to bake the limestone and produce quicklime.
These days the industry has all gone and aside from farm works picking cauliflowers in the fields and the ever present seabirds the sheep are likely to be your only companions on a quiet weekday.
Well refreshed from my walking it’s time to get busy with plenty of greenwood working and the odd landrover to repair as usual.
Ah, the life of a free man: works in nature, goes to the coast to unwind; who said that countryside idyll was dead?
Well I try! Though I suspect that the rose tinted view that emerges on this blog doesn’t really reflect the rather less idyllic reality. Like spending this morning in meetings with my finance and admin departments (which is code for sitting down and writing a list of all the invoicing, tax and form filling tasks that I’ve avoiding and don’t have employees to undertake for me) before embarking upon another fine day of landrover maintenance and fence mending, charcoal bagging and delivery. But I have just had a phone enquiry for a childs chair so perhaps I’ll skip the admin as usual and go straight to the rest……Happy days.,,,,,,
if ever you are this way again, look me up Mark. always glad to meet other greenwooders and woodsmen
Paul 2sheds