The second of my walking days with my Nephew, Ross, while in South Wales with my Sister for Christmas, was on Boxing Day and with dry weather forecast we made our plans.
I had seen a waterfall that looked pretty in a photo on social media and wanted to visit that spot, so we opted for a reasonably early start and headed off towards Neath and the edge of the Brecon Beacons. The small village of Pontneddfechan was where we needed to be for our first port of call, where we easily found the free car park that was mentioned in the walk details I had viewed previously.
Getting slightly confused by the walk details, we actually initially headed out of the car park on the wrong path for the waterfall that i wanted to visit. This 'wrong' path led us to a small and narrow waterfall on a different river and provided us a few interesting photos early on.
Returning to the car park, Ross found the visitor map on the boards and ascertained that we had indeed used the wrong path for where we wanted to be - this was actually due to there being two rivers and me selecting the wrong one initially to walk alongside.
So, now heading in the right direction we climbed a quite steep but well trodden path that would bring us to Sychryd Falls. Arriving there, it looked as pretty as the photo I had seen on the internet from which I knew that it must be possible to get down to be level with the river. We found a suitable spot to descend that was fairly obviously one that a lot of previous visitors had used and I was able to shoot a variety of angles there.
The water was swirling around the pool where the water dropped into from the falls and then flowing off down river over other rocks, and there was plenty of water following the recent rainy days and it was quite fast flowing.
Apart from what would have been a welcome bit of additional sunny light, the photos were pretty much as I had hoped for and I achieved several pleasing compositions.
Clambering back up the the path level, we opted to continue the walk to go over the wooden footbridge that was in the background of the waterfall shots.
Once on the bridge, I quickly realised that there was an interesting shot from the bridge, looking down the falls and down river including the lychen covered trees and moss covered rocks. Some bronze coloured leaves remained on one tree and the ferns along where the footpath was had turned bronze colour due to time of year and added to the available colour in my composition.
We then retraced our steps down the footpath and back to the car,as we planned to visit a second waterfall location. We set off for Resolven and easily found another free car park, this one signposted as the car park for Melincourt Falls.
The footpath to this waterfall was also well signposted and the woodland walk alongside but above the brook was a very short distance to reach the waterfall. This one was very spectacular, at 24mtrs it's the tallest in Wales apparently, and with the recent rains having provided quite a bit of water it was quite a torrent that was crashing onto the rocks 24mtrs down.
It was quite thunderous and creating a lot of spray, but I found a pleasing angle to start with and Ross found me a low down view that I liked a lot.
After that, it was the short walk back to the car while stopping a couple of times to take pictures of the brook and the woodland.
A very successful morning and hugely enjoyable, rewarded with some very pleasing images.
Коментарі