One of the images I submitted to La_Spice's Colour Purple competition was this one of the watchtower at Portcawl harbour...

But did you really believe the watchtower was purple? No, of course you didn't... I cheated!

The watchtower really looks like this...

The camera never lies... except when someone like me decides to 'manipulate' the things the camera sees.

Feel free to click the images for larger views if you're so inclined.

If you don't know how this was done and would like to know, I'll happily blog the method.

It's one of those soft wet days in Welsh Wales today; you know the sort, the ones where it doesn't look as if it's raining much, but will drench you to the skin if you venture out in it. Still at least it isn't cold.

One of the rusulting factors of rainy days like today are the numerous small, sparkling streams that grace the Welsh landscape.

I was directed towards Thomas Hardy's The Darkling Thrush when I posted Gray's Elegy yesterday; I'm so pleased I was too.

For anyone else who, like me, is ignorant of Hardy's work I thought I'd post The Darkling Thrush here.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled vine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to me
The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-throated evensong
Of joy illimited.
An ancient thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy

Yesterday I blogged a bit about the old road bridge at Chepstow; the River Wye marks the traditional border between Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire as marked by the detail from the centre of the bridge.

The county border also marks the border between England & Wales.