ONCE UPON a        TIME
                                                                                          ezine at l'atelier bonita
                                                     established since december 2002

A Favourite Place                                by  Joanna Browning Roath Lake, Cardiff, Wales And now, I have a question for you, something that I was thinking about last weekend. Do you have a favourite place? Somewhere you can go and be alone with your thoughts, and feel completely at peace? My favourite place is the place where I spent most of last weekend, soaking up the June sunshine. It is called Roath Park. To get there is a short, 15-minute walk from my house, a very pleasant walk since it takes me through two other parks. The first is a recreation area: a wide expanse of grass studded with football and rugby posts and ringed with trees, a cool stream running down one side, and with a children's play area at the nearest end. Here, I take my little sister sometimes when she comes to me for the day, a place where we can kick a ball around together, or simply for me to watch her climbing the rope frame or flying high on the swings. The second park is fenced in, a more formal arrangement of flower gardens, tennis courts and bowling green, with that stream flowing through the centre, serene and beautiful. Roath Park, Fairoaks facing north And then we cross the road and reach Roath Park itself: a wide expanse of green in the centre of the city, and, to me, an oasis of peace. There are many aspects of this park. At the south end are the rose gardens and the hot house, which houses exotic plants of all kinds, and equally exotic wildlife: coi carp, terrapins and rare birds, all rescued by the park wardens having been abandoned, and given a safe new home. Here I spent many hours as a student, sat upon a bench in the corner, warm and dry and surrounded by this beauty as I completed my coursework with the rain falling outside. Then a little further into the park we reach the children's play area, with the ice cream stand nearby. The stream that flows through the parks And then, up the hill, we find the lake, fed by that same stream which flows south through the other two parks. It is a vast expanse of water to find in the middle of a city. At the south end stands a small lighthouse, built in 1916 as a memorial to Captain Scott, who took sail on his ill-fated final expedition from Cardiff five years previously. Nearby is the boathouse, always popular in summer as visitors may take out peddle or rowing boats to explore the lake. From the south end of the lake looking north, beyond the trees on the islands all you will see are the distant hills on the sky-line; there is no sign of the several miles of city that lie beyond, hidden by those trees (no high-rise buildings here!). At the north end of the lake are four small islands, each one a haven for waterfowl of all descriptions. Here you will find a colony of geese, highly tame and fond of terrorising visitors in hope of being fed; with these around, the grass never needs to be mowed. Rare ducks also make this lake their home, and various other types of waterfowl, some of them very rare. My own favourites are the ever-elegant swans, gliding across the water in regal splendour. At present there are around twenty of these magnificent creatures, including two breeding pairs raising a new family of cygnets. Each week I walk around the lake and so watch these youngsters grow. There is also a pair of black swans who are never seen apart, but keep separate from the rest of their kind, dancing constant attendance on one another. Mama Swan and her Brood And this is my favourite place, and here I come weekend after weekend, bringing bottle of water, picnic and a good book, to sit beside the lake or rose garden and read in the shade of a tree; or simply to see what there is to see, and contemplate life, the universe, and everything. Runners jog around the lake; children play and shout, all around is hustle and bustle; the park is never empty, and yet here I find peace and solitude of that most precious kind. Everyone needs a place like that. Fairoaks facing south, Roath Park, Cardiff, Wales Photographs by Joanna Browning ©2003 Joanna Browning ____________ Joanna Browning was born in Wales in 1977, and still lives there. After graduating from Cardiff University with a joint degree in History and Welsh History, she drifted through a variety of different jobs before landing at her present position in the voluntary sector. She has a wide range of hobbies and interests, among them being the beautiful game of football, which she discovered at the impressionable age of 13 via the World Cup Italia '90, and has been hooked ever since.

                                                   ONCE UPON      a TIME
                                                                                          ezine at l'atelier bonita
                                                     established since december 2002