During the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of work in some of Wales’ upland areas, reviewing management options for conservation of habitats and species, and monitoring the effects of grazing on huge areas of common land. It’s been getting pretty cold and wet, and the upland terrain is hard on the feet and legs, and all I was doing was walking. It made me wonder about the hardiness of the people who built these walls 🙂
On the day I took this photo I imagined two new tunes, both pretty good as I recall. By the time I got home I couldn’t remember them. They’re gone. One of the pitfalls of never learning to write music down. Oh well maybe they’ll return to me in a more convenient place and time.
Website: https://mikehowe.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mikehowemusic
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikehowemusic
Music Blog Directory
A medieval sailor’s chapel of ease dating to the 14th Century on a lonely headland on the West Wales coast. If you look in the centre of the picture below you can just make out the white gable end above the beach. This place, Mwnt (pronounced munt), is also the site of an unsuccessful Flemish invasion in 1155 and its defeat was long afterwards celebrated on the first Sunday in January as “Sul Coch y Mwnt” (Red Sunday of Mwnt), as a consequence of the bloodshed on that day.
See more fabulous images of Wales on Mike Alexander’s website www.scapeimages.com
There must be something in the sea air…..
A rare splash of green in an otherwise seemingly endless red rock landscape in the depths of Utah, a place so quiet and still all you can hear is the gentle swirls and eddies in the water as the mighty Colorado River wanders off on its ancient path.
Website: https://mikehowe.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mikehowemusic
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikehowemusic
Music Blog Directory
On a trail out of the Grand Canyon in stifling heat the storm approaches…and then passes by to the west
It’s been a while since our little jaunt from east to west across America came to an end in San Francisco. It was really just an extended family holiday but travelling across a continent of such magnificent landscapes and amazing towns and cities always leaves you changed a little.
It’s easy for us to criticise the countries that we live in and to take the incredible privilege of doing so for granted, but when I think back to standing at the Ground Zero Memorial in New York City on this anniversary of 9/11, and when I hear in the news everyday stories of madness and destruction, lack of human rights and freedoms in so many other countries in the world, I realise that America, along with so many other countries where freedom and democracy are regraded as a basic human right, is a pretty good place.
Those spectacular American landscapes and landforms, more than any others that I’ve seen, remind us that the world is very old, much older than any holy book would have you believe. They were there before we arrived, and they’ll be there long after we’ve gone. Homo sapiens in all of his/her arrogance doesn’t appear to be capable of realising that the universe isn’t all about tiny, insignificant us, it couldn’t be less so. But beautiful mountains, plains, lakes, rivers and seas at least give us the chance to see the world as it really is, if only we take the time to look.
Mike Howe 