New Places

With this new found sense of adventure, I decided to go somewhere new today, even if there wasn't a Cadwaladers there!

I had seen a few pics on Facebook of places that intrigued me. The first was the abandoned ship near Flint.

It was originally going to be a retail and leisure centre called the Funship and the story of this can be found on this website http://www.dukeoflancaster.net/

The picture below is from that site and shows what the ship used to look like. It is very sad.

You can't get very close to the ship, but the North Wales Coastal Path takes you past it so you can see a great deal.

The graffitti covering it is quite incredible, but I am not sure the story behind that. One rumour is that it is an art project for local students. I don't know if that is true, but what a fabulous canvas to work on if it is.

Shot the pics handheld and just bumped the colours and clarity a bit on Lightroom. I have found that now I am shooting in RAW, the pics come out quite a bit lighter so almost all need adjusting. Not sure if that is the process, or just me!

Next stop, Talacre. The pictures of the lighthouse that I had seen looked beautiful and I am quite into lighthouses at the moment. I believe it is no longer operational, and is in a bit of a state, but somehow that adds to the attraction. 

The beach is vast and you can (and I did) walk for miles on the sands. 

The beach is beautiful with sand dunes all down the side. There are thousands of beautiful shells too, and I only picked up a few. Honest!

By the time I had walked back along the beach, the tide had gone right out and you could walk all the way around the Lighthouse and even climb the steps up to the door, which unfortunately is barricaded.

Final stop of the day, Aber Falls. This is just by the unpronounceable town Abergwyngreyn which is just up from Conwy. Had got as far as the car park a few months ago, but today I was going to get to the falls. Its not too bad a walk, a bit steep to start, but easily manageable. Fitness is definitely improving! 

Sadly I seem to have lost all my photos from Aber Falls, sorry

The walk to the falls is just under 2 miles on a pretty good path and you can hear the falls long before you see them.

I had been told there was another waterfall over the bridge, through the gate, past the sheep and a bit further on which I found. Not quite as impressive as the first, but lovely nonetheless. On the way back, the people before me had left the gate open and 2 of the sheep had made a bid for freedom. I closed the gate, but then thought, how will the sheep get back. This side of the gate was a bit near the waterfall and I had a vision of kamikaze sheep! So I reopened the gate and stood back. One of the sheep seemed to understand what was going on and trotted back through it but its fellow escapee had other ideas and ran off. So there was I trying to round the sheep up and get it through the gate while making sure more sheep didn't come through. After a few minutes of pleading and arm waving I had to admit defeat and closed the gate hoping that the sheep would have the sense to stay away from the edge. Not sure what the countryside code says about those situations! So slightly troubled at leaving it I walked back to the car, but as luck would have it, passed a farmer in his tractor with 2 dogs herding sheep towards the field, so hopefully the sheep will be reunited with its flock.

So a long and eventful day. Over 17500 steps and 7.75 miles! 

Lessons Learned: If I am going to take a picture of a beautiful lighthouse reflection, don't walk through the water first and then have to wait 5 mins for the ripples to stop!

Leave the sheep herding to One Man and His Dog!