A Reminder of What Summer Use to Be Like.

I know that the season of autumn doesn't officially start until September the 21st but this year it seems to have bedded down sometime in the middle of July and the trees and plants have already started shedding their leaves.

I thought that this would be a good time to dig out some photos I took in my garden while the flowers were blooming during the brief summer we had last year, I hope that they give you the same internal feeling of well-being that I got while I was sorting through them.

I've also added a picture of my cat Evey who passed away last week, another reason why I was looking for something to cheer me up. She will be missed.

Swansea Observatory and the West Pier.

This is the final part to my walk around the marina. After going back to the car and paying for another hours parking I made my way out onto the sea front turning left and heading towards the observatory, when we finally got there I was quite surprised to see a sign saying open as I'd never seen this open to the public, personally I just thought that the observatory was another hair brained idea by the council, a pretty building that served no purpose, how wrong I was.

Walking round the observatory Rachel and I were asked if we'd like to join the tour given by the Swansea Astronomical Society, it was a bit surreal, I'd only wanted to take a few pictures of the building but now I had the chance to see what it was actually for.

We joined the tour and were lead into the front tower and were give a talk on the planets in our solar system and what happens at the observatory and how the society installed the biggest telescope in Wales after the council scrapped plans to put coin operated telescopes there. Amazingly this telescope had been built by one of the members.

The whole set up really impressed me and I think I might just go to one of the star parties that they talked about.

Swansea Barrage and the Old South Docks.

Following on from my last post, we continued our walk around what I believe is the old south dock, I remember going fishing there when I was still in school and caught my first ever fish a Scad or Horse Mackerel off one of the pontoons that is no longer there. I also remember the seeing the first stages of the construction of the barrage but back then it was a mass of steel girders and not the picturesque weir pool it is today.

I've also been through the lock gates on a boat when I got a job on one of the boats but that only lasted one day as my legs are far from sea legs and to say that I suffer from sea sickness is an understatement.

I quite enjoyed walking around the docks and seeing how far this place has come since I last visited it over a decade ago.

Swansea Marina.

With weather being nice for a change today,Rachel and I took a walk around Swansea marina, I've been wanting to go down there and take a few pictures for a while now, mainly to have a look at what will be the tallest residential building in Wales and to have a look at the barrage, weir and bridge across it. Also, I was hoping to go get a few shots of Swansea observatory but I'd only paid for an hour in the car park and it took me just over an hour to get round the whole of the marina.

I bit the bullet and went back to the car and paid a second £1.10 just to leave the car in a half empty car park for another hour and carried on our little walk until we got to the observatory. I got a little camera happy so I'll be breaking up today into three posts and hopefully I'll try and do a little write in each post.

Red Arrows over Mumbles.

Back off my trip to France Rachel and I took a trip down to Mumbles to watch the Red Arrows air show, I will admit the the pictures aren't that great as I left the camera on auto focus meaning that it usually focuses in the closest this to it but with a bit of fiddling with Picasa image editor some of the turned out OK.

We had a pretty good time enjoying a fry up in Trams then finishing off with a Joe's ice cream. I also dragged Rachel down on the beach to take a few photos of the pier and lighthouse from across the bay.

Castle Square and Swansea Castle.

On one of my very few trips into the city centre I took a few shots of Swansea Castle and Castle Square. I vaguely remember Castle Square being Castle Gardens before somebody thought it would be a good idea to pave over the flowerbeds and build a fountain, somehow this is looked at as progress.

Swiss Valley Reservoir, Llanelli.

Some pictures taken from a walk around Swiss Valley Reservoir, another trip where I was hoping to find another place to go fishing, but to be honest it did look a bit barren even though I did see a few clueless people fishing with heavy duty set ups, no net and one dead Roach which had been unfortunate enough to take one of their baits.

The Reservoir was well hidden and when I did eventually find it and it was massive and quite a nice walk which was aided by a rare dose of sunshine. I even managed to spot two toads in the middle of a late spawning embrace and they didn't seem to happy when I picked them up for a photo, enjoy the photos.