amy goes to swansea; wales, + bath; england

First things first - I've been in this little space of the internet for four years now! That is so insane, I can't even. Four years... wow. It'd just finished being 2011 when Awkward Donkey started up, and now it's 2016 and I'm 17, not 12/13. Holy crap, guys. I just want to say thank you for everyone who's supported me over the (freakin' four!) years, your encouragement has led to this blog not dying in flames just a couple of months down the line. I've made some good blog friends, and I'm glad that this space has been kept positive and awesome by all 80,000 of you. I hope y'all continue to check out this little space and stay here for as long as you can c:

So, on a completely different topic, we adhere to what this post is actually about. 

To celebrate it being 17 years since I clambered into this world, my family and I went down to my hometown in Swansea, Wales. It was pretty awesome for the most part, and I got to see sights and people that I've been missing since my last visit. Naturally, I thought y'all would appreciate a spam.

☻ Early mornings spent in Swansea Market, buying farm-grown produce from locals ☻

☻ Y'all should probably prepare yourselves for a bombardment of some of my favourite typical Swansea buildings - renovated into banks or shops in the 1900's ☻

☻ Okay, I spent a long time deliberating as to whether or not to include this image, because it's so out of place. Basically, one evening in the hotel we didn't do much apart from get food and chill with family, so I tried to take a still time-lapse of the road outside, and ended up with a cool effect. From there, I experimented with different shutter speeds and whatnot, and this was probably my favourite image to come out of it... if you ignore me trying to suavely move out of the shot ☻

☻ I actually met a guy around this church, giving me advice on what grave to take photos of, and the second time passing met a goth girl who kept giving me evils, so hey, little anecdote ☻

☻ One of the main things I love about Swansea is that you get lots of little things like this around - in this case, a full-on eroding castle in the middle of town, amongst bars and Topshops ☻

☻ Wind Street, formerly christened as "Wine Street" because of all the drunk people hanging around the bars. Yum ☻

☻ (*Something really weird happened to this image, so I had to crop and re-upload it, so I'm sorry for the lack of quality*) There's actually a story behind this photo - I was spending the early morning by myself for a nostalgic photography trip, down Wind (Wine) Street, when the guy above whistled at me and called me into a deserted barber shop painted in a sickly yellow tone. Now, I have no idea why, but I went into his store, only to get a really weird vibe. After he spent ages chatting in a way that made me feel as if he were just trying to stall me, he said he was going "round the back" to get something. I was thinking "okay, he's going to get a machete and some gaffa-tape, this is how it ends", so very speedily left. Either he was a very friendly Iranian guy with a sincere interest in his "best camera angles", or he was a murderer. Pish posh. ☻

☻ Honestly, you get the most random quaint shop designs like this, in between opticians and banks ☻

☻ Churches are so pretty ☻

☻ One of my favourite Swansea stores - a Waterstones with the most extravagant designs going on inside and out, with a reading corner at the top of the spiralling staircase where you can have coffees and hot cocos ☻

☻ This probably doesn't look all too amazing to y'all, but I love how the little sidestreets have the pastel seaside buildings ☻

☻ Your typical Swansea bars ☻

☻ One afternoon, I met a friend and we went out to Hanson at the Chelsea, an AA* restaurant (if you're a foodie, you may have heard about it in the Michelin Guide), and we had the most amazing food. I've featured a few of my favourite dishes here ☻

☻ The view from the hotel window was awesome, even if annoying foggy ☻

 ☻ One evening, my family and I went down to Winter Wonderland, and I took a bunch of photos whilst the scent of doughnuts and candyfloss hung in the air, with  the breeze being cool and soft as it wafted around the laughing locals ☻

☻ Fun fact: this is where I spent my 11t birthday, and I had the time of my life ☻

☻ This was one of the rides that I went on, and to be honest with y'all, it was pretty sweet, even if my friend Chloe's hair covered mine and Lucy's faces the whole time as we swung around an little fake flakes of snow filtered around our speeding cart ☻

☻ Bokeh ☻

☻ Swansea Marina is one of my favourite places, especially after-dark ☻

☻ I could be wrong, but if you overlook the river Abertawe, the place where all the little city lights are is called Kilvey Hill, the 633ft mini-mountain that I climbed a month ago by myself, only to find that lots of drug-pushers, rapists and possibly murderers hang around there ☻

>> On our final day, my family and I decided to take a detour to Bath (and Margam, but that's a story for another day), and it was honestly so awesome. I've featured a few shots of my favourite things from there. <<

☻ The exterior of Bath Cathedral ☻

☻ Either my mom of a ghost, who knows? ☻

☻ The Roman Baths ☻

☻ The next few shots are from the Roman Baths, where we walked around and tasted some of the warm water ☻

☻ Beautiful buildings made up of the legendary Bath Stone - the weather was too bad for me to get some good photos, but whole streets were made out of this stuff.. stunning ☻

So, to conclude, I spent my birthday re-falling in love with my hometown, and it was great. I took around 600 shots, so I thought I'd show you guys some of my least worst ones.

Happy 1,460 day blogoversary, y'all - we made it!