A nice Sunday walk in the mud

I don't have much time for walking these days, but I try to get at least twice a week out there for some fresh air and some dirt on my boots.

The walk two weeks ago gave me the opportunity to test the camera of my new phone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. It was holding out quite well when compared to that of my old HTC Desire. The built-in panorama function is working great! Just point the camera at the landscape, and the phone does the rest. Just don't go too fast: That led to the  aberrations on the right side of the image. 

Panorama view somewhere north of Cardiff

There are some alternatives out there, but unfortunately I hadn't thought to compare them on the spot. The app Pano does not take the images automatically, but the user has to take them one by one (with some help from the app). And one has to be careful to not twist the camera which leads to a distorted stitched image.
An alternative I used with my proper cameras is Microsoft ICE which allows me to stitch the images together after I got them off the camera. This works quite well, and one can create stitches in more than one dimension, i.e. take pictures in a grid and then create a composite. I will add some examples later.

Other than a testing ground for the phone camera the walk was quite muddy, and it was worse than these images suggest:

Left foot

Right foot

Usually the ground is quite easy to walk in that area north of Cardiff, but the recent rain and the heavy use by horses turned some of the horse paths we ended up walking on turned them into shallow bogs. But at least the first daffodils were out, although we are not sure if they will make it through the spring: 

The first daffodils

One of the surprises we found is this sign of some hiking path leading into nowhere. It seems no one has been using that path for a long time, and nature claimed it back. Not sure if the owner of the land would actually care ...

A path to nowhere

... since the house just across the fence is derelict:

Anyone home?