Gather round, cariads, and allow me to show you the land of my people...

For the first time in a very long while, we got some snow before the new year! The trouble with our house is that, being at the bottom of the valley, barely any of the snow that fell settled, and so we could only see white-capped heads of the valleys. And so, for the first time since getting back from Japan, I decided to go for a little walk, today. This photo was taken to the south east, from the top of the hill just north of where I live. The sun had just set over the hills, and the clouds had begun to set in for the night, the temperature beginning to glide below freezing. I was all alone, though a single trail of paw prints in the patches of snow around me gave the impression that I may have been the only human around, I may not have been on my own. There was no wind at all, and the only sound was the gentle flow of the river below.

Starting from points of reference closest to me, the row of houses near the centre of the shot is Sunnyside Terrace, just on the outskirts of Cymmer, and is the road that leads up the valley to Glyncorrwg, following the Corrwg River. That road runs around the hill, where a huge fire in 2004 meant that my family and I were nearly evacuated, and hundreds of the dead trees still stand as a reminder. The large settlement beyond that is the upper end of Cymmer, and the road leading beyond that leads to Croeserw, where you can see a long row of snow-capped roofs. The snow covered hill in the background marks the division between Afan Valley, and the Garw Valley, the river within which flows down to Brynmenyn, and meets the Ogmore River. In the distance, off to the right on the horizon, you may notice that the land appears rather more flat. That is the north coast of Somerset, England, divided by a thin sliver of the Severn Estuary. That, my friends, is beyond our borders; you must never go there, Simba...

Hope you enjoy!