WETHER OR NOT ... IT'S WET !!

  I know I've been blethering on just a bit about the rain we've had recently up here on the old  mountain, but walking across our lovely moors has been more like splodging across a giant, sphagnum moss bath sponge, before it gets wrung out!

  This morning, fully weather proofed and wellied, (dunlop style!) we ventured out in a break in the dank, dark under sky. Driving up the mountain road we were met by a fast flowing, downward heading deluge. I parked up by the old church and we headed further up the road, wading at times ankle deep in a stream of soggy leaves, getting stung by the sudden easterly rain, that sounded more like hail as it hit my hood and painful on the face. 
"No chance of taking any photographs this morning."  I thought. 
I've been using my mobile phone for all the photo's so far on this blog and they've been o,k. but now ... thanks to my very generous Dad, who sent me an early Christmas gift, I have a lovely, new (more complex but compact) digital camera, all charged up, ready to go ... and the heavens have opened ... unlike my Lumix lens with zoom facility! All I had wanted was a window of opportunity to learn about how this pocket sized technology works.

  Well I was lucky, half an hour later, the wind died down, the rain dried up and my new toy had a first proper outing. Himself was not amused as I focused on anything but him, but I was happily engaged in finding things to photograph, such as details in a recently pleached hawthorn hedge, where the old, lichen patterned wood, bursts with new growth.

Above me, my neighbourly jackdaws who had also flown up to join us on the mountain, were chattering excitedly as they twisted and turned as if to say there was something worth looking at in the top fields above me. And then, through a small gap in the hedge, a torrent of water flowed down across the steep pasture below me.  Further along the fence line, there were  more newly formed streamlets ... this one the largest and a noisy one too

I splodged along to the top field gate to see what it was like on the other side and this was the scene that stretched out before me, where very wool-heavy, rain sodden sheep were splashing through the flooding field, seemingly searching for some higher, drier ground.

Despite this, a Welsh ram, was not to be put off by such a saturating, and as I discovered when I tried out my new zoom facility, he was actively engaging with his ewes.

Not to embarrass the lad, I waited until they had moved on before taking the next photo.

They had been joined by a flock of seagulls, which splash-landed in the foaming current. Behind me, as the sun came out, the newly formed torrent  carried on down the mountain

With all this water, flowing freely about, there's little use for their usual drinking trough

    which just looked lovely in the sun, with all the leaves in it and around it's base.

Turning around and looking across the Argoed, the forestry had started to gently steam

It was time to head home for drier clothes, a mug of tea and some toast.