Brown Owl

The painting above is an oil of Carmarthen Town from the South, South West. The river runs on the right hand side of the painting and is just visible in places. The view is from near Green Castle Corner.


Green Castle itself is a ruined 15th or 16th century fortified manor house in private hands. Nearby is a quarry that was used for much of the stonework in Carmarthen. So much so that the riverbank here is called Cooks Bank. It was named thus, because at night you could see all the cooking fires from the quarrymen and the bargemen who cut and ferried the stone from the quarry.

Green Castle Woods is under the ownership of a trust and is open to the public. I believe there are over 100 acres of woodland.
The woods are home to a variety of birds including Tawny Owls which are encouraged by putting up large boxes (over 2ft deep). As the owl is struggling in Wales with loss of habitat this is a very worthwhile project. You don’t often see owls anyway and obviously they are mainly nocturnal.

Alex doesn’t like to be reminded but she did unfortunately add to the demise of the Owl Species when she ran over one a few years ago.

Today I did a painting of the Towy Valley in the gallery.