As we headed into February, I could sense that there would be headwinds this month. Another month of not really going anywhere new, treading old ground both physically and metaphorically.
January gets a lot of flack for where it sits in the calendar. It’s yet another dark month straight after the trials of Christmas are over with. The trimmings are down, the credit card bill is a mile long, but there’s something about the promise of another year ahead. January is a time for reflection and planning, which is something I can get behind.
February on the other hand…it’s still just more winter. It’s still dark, but many of our grand plans from New Year may have already fallen by the wayside. February is the month you have to endure to reach March.
A niche…
Meteorological winter in Wales… Short days, invariably murky, usually raining, but every now and again the sun would break through and give us a glimpse of spring.
Sometimes you step out of the house wondering what to shoot, but lately I’ve been having great fun standing in streams, with a camera balanced on my feet. I sold my tripod in the great purge of 2018 and I’ve been improvising with a sturdy pair of boots ever since.
It doesn’t always work, particularly if you find yourself on uneven ground, but every now and again it does.
I do wonder if shooting parts of the various streams around here became a bit of a crutch after a while –I did take a lot of watery photos this month rather than try to come up with something original. Fortunately, these are images from this month I’d be quite happy to add to the store when this project is over –although probably before, to be honest.
I’m hopeful that as the year progresses we’ll start getting out of the neighbourhood a little more, until then…
History…
One bonus of living where I do is the number of relics that can be found here. There are old mine shafts, ventilation tunnels and all sorts here. I started delving into the local history back in the summer, curious as to what various ruins were that I’d see on my lockdown walks.
Some of the tunnels are blocked off, for obvious reasons, but there’s one that is still completely open, although I’ve not crawled that far into it. I don’t really have the nerve for confined spaces…
So, it’s already March and I’m a bit tardy putting this up. I’m hopeful that there will be a vaccination in my near future and I can start heading further afield. It would be nice to leave the village, if only for a short time.
Is it spring yet?
Gavin Lewis 
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