Framedlight

We were very early into Margam Country Park on the Sunday morning, rubbing our eyes through lack of sleep. The way up to the start area of the Dragon cycle ride was muddy and the campervan got stuck in a rut causing  a bit of a tailback until we managed to come off the road onto the grass to get round the area. I dropped Alan off for what promised to be a long day - he was doing 140 miles through the Black Mountains, not easy. I had around 8 hours to kill. What to do? The Black Mountains would be nice but full of thousands of cyclists. The Gower was a 2 hour round trip and we had to drive home after the race - another 5 hours - too much. So I decided on local and went into the sort of seaside area of Port Talbot, Aberafon. There are lots of Aberafons in Wales, aber meaning mouth of and afon meaning river! The place attempts a seaside feel with flags and a promenade but does fall slightly short. The Afon Afon divides Aberafon from Port Talbot proper and walking across the broad sweep

In June we took the campervan down to Margam, near Port Talbot, as Alan was doing the Dragon cycle ride from there. We had not booked anywhere to stay for the night and arrived at Kenfig reserve looking for somewhere to have a short walk and prepare dinner. As there were no barriers on the car park we also decided to stay there to sleep. A mistake as the car park seemed to be full of activity throughout the night with cars racing round and goodness knows what taking place. We locked the door and put our hands over our ears but did not sleep well!! The reserve runs down through dunes to the sea which is a fair walk away and has a large lake from where you can see the chimneys of Port Talbot on the horizon. The evening was warm and sunny but suddenly clouded over and there was a sharp shower (while we were in a bird hide fortunately) and this gave some wonderful light. The pictures were taken on the D800e with 24-70mm zoom lens and a tripod. I have converted 2 of the pictures into mono