So Why so Sad?
Trip Start
May 10, 2010
1
15
Trip End
Jun 20, 2010
Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
Monday, June 14, 2010
Many people bag Wales and Cardiff and indeed some even advised me not to come but just because others don’t like it here doesn’t mean that I won’t. The ratio of sheep to people in Wales is 3 – 1, it rains most of the time and the country is quite rural and has lived in England’s shadow for a very long time. The Welsh didn’t quality for the soccer world cup and so the locals tend to support any team that plays England, a bit like Australians. They sympathized with my pain over the Germany thrashing, something that has entered soccer folklore for being so embarrassingly bad. And if they met any Americans they thanked them for not losing to England. Despite what Rimmer says on Red Dwarf when using the universal translator Welsh is actually an official language, spoken by 600 000 people and all signs are bi lingual. Linguistically the language is supposed to be similar to French but seems more on par with Danish or Dutch from the little I’ve seen. When I checked into my hotel the girl serving handed me a Welsh Map and said I should still be able to figure out where things are. I actually couldn’t as the words are quite different and I exchanged my map for an English one at the tourist information center.
Cardiff is quite a nice city set alongside the river Taff and has a fair amount of Greenery. Dominating the skyline near the river is the huge Millennium stadium. This massive stadium is the venue for rock concerts, sports and anything else done on a large scale. Further along is Cardiff Castle one of the most indulgent castles ever built. It is a walled castle with large grounds inside featuring a fort and a very beautiful interior dining hall and library. On the other side of the river from the castle we have the beautiful Sophia Gardens a debacle heritage listed site. This is where Australia lost a one day game to Bangladesh in 2005 and the real place where Australia lost the 2009 ashes as they failed to get the worst batsman in world cricket out having 44 minutes to do so. I needed to come here and look for answers. Why could we not get Monty out – was there anything in the water, air or sun that could affect a persons mental state late in the day. I visited the debacle site and noted all of the conditions, thought the light was perfect and could think of no reason why an Australian cricket captain couldn’t bowl fast bowlers at both ends with instructions to bowl bouncers. I really need to be on the 2013 ashes tour as a logistical and strategic advisor.
The city center is mainly pedestrian only and contains all sorts of arcades and malls and they are all very classy and modern looking. The woman here are no more or less beautiful then anywhere else but I have to comment on the amazingly white and clear skin many of them have. I don’t know if it’s the water, rain, wind, moisturizer or fresh mountain air but many of the woman have this incredible snow white skin. If you’re ever looking to improve the quality of your skin, suffering from a skin disorder or just couldn’t shake the acne then I recommend coming to Wales. The climate may help you but there could also be some beauty secrets, moisturizers or anti-aging creams that the locals can put you onto. The city has a good array of restaurants that are scattered around together in various small locations that give them some atmosphere. The food is of good quality and they also have my favorite UK chain, Pizza Express. Here they modify menu items to your liking and give you that friendly service banter that is generally only found in the US. The coffee is of reasonable standard here as well and has definitely improved considerably in the UK since my last visit. If one avoids Café Nero and sticks to the independent cafes, which are growing quickly in number and tries to find flat whites you should get a half decent cup of coffee – similar to Adelaide standard. The people are very friendly and my hotel had a fun youthful vibe to it. The only real problem with Cardiff and the UK in general are the large numbers of old retired people that walk around in large groups and constantly slow down queues, access routes and get in your way however possible. Traveling is a hassle at any age but it must be so much more difficult when older that you’d think they just wouldn’t bother yet they are taking over the world after the German and Spanish tourists. When I retire I plan on watching DVD boxed sets all day but this older generation have other ideas.
I signed up for a couple of tours whilst I was here in order to take me into the regions surrounding the city. The first tour was quite small and was just myself and an American couple. The couple were celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary and were quite the name droppers. The guy is related to Peter Frampton, of Show me the Way fame and proudly states this fact. I don’t know if I’d be sharing this information so easily if it were me (they actually couldn’t name his hit single – I had to do that!). They also know the lead guitarist from John Denver’s band. Here I am thinking it was John Denver but it’s someone else. Further to this the guy makes ceiling fans and these fans have appeared in all sorts of movies including Inglorious Bastards and I Robot. Apparently people watch these movies and ring him up and ask for fans. I guess product placement does work.
The tour took us to this place known as the big pit which is actually an old mine that is now open to the public. They kit you up and take you underground on a tour. It’s a horrible place and not for tall people as they tell stories of how it worked, the diseases one could get and all the different ways one could die down there. It was even worse in the 19th century when kids worked in the mine for nothing in shocking conditions doing 12 hour shifts often in pitch darkness. They simulated pitch darkness for us and it’s not nice even for a minute. It seems to me that everyone that lived before 1950 had a crap life unless they were wealthy. The horses were treated better than the workers as they cost more money. If a horse died there was an inquiry. If a worker died they hired someone else. We then went into a mountainous region known as the Brecon Brecon which was very pretty, especially as it was a bright sunny day and was great for a wander. On our way back to the city we stopped in a forest that was planted some years ago when the British realized they were running out of trees. One of the Americans inquired about the Scandinavians trees that were planted and wanted to know what Scandinavia was.
On the 2nd tour we went down through Swansea and stopped at the Dylan Thomas centre. Apparently he is Wales’s most famous poet but the center was only for fans and a complete bore. On a glorious sunny day we then made our way down to the (David) Gower peninsula on the Wales South Coast. The Gower peninsula is a beautiful, graceful and elegant stretch of beach that is centered on a large bay. There is a sort of care freeness and laziness in this part of the world as there are small towns dotted along the coast that set themselves up as beach and surfing communities. You would be right in thinking that I only came here to see a peninsula that shares a name with one of the greatest English cricketers of our generation. Indeed David Gower was one of the few English cricketers that I loved watching and unlike so many others of his time he made runs against the West Indies and hence made hundreds against the Australians batting in his sleep. Like the batsman this place is really one of the most beautiful I have been to in the UK. The bay actually has blue water, the beach has sand and all of the surrounding area is a lush green. Not to mention the unique shape of the area, quaint little houses and villages that line the coast and small rock islands just off the coast. It is a great place to admire the views and wander and compare a cricketer to a coastline.
This tour was alot more fun then the first and along the way I got friendly with this pretty red-headed Australian girl who was a mega nerd and into comics and science fiction, so as you can imagine we had a lot to talk about. Now Tripod have a song entitled, “There’s a hot girl in the comic shop” and so I had to ask her if she actually went into comic shops to buy comics. Her response was that she never actually went into shops because they were full of weird looking guys the likes you see on the Big Bang theory and so she purchased all her comics online. Next time I go to Tripod I will have to let them know about this. On the way back from Gower we visited a castle. Wales has 641 castles and our tour guide informs us that Australians refer to them as ABC’s – Another Bloody Castle. The tour guide was lots of fun; although he repeated the same jokes on the 2 tours and he handed out Welsh Cakes and played Welsh Music the entire way. We heard Harps, fiddles, male choirs, Bonnie Tyler, Stereophonics, Shirley Bassey, Dave Edmunds and Tom Jones. Indeed Tom Jones was played in every tourist shop that we went into. We even drove past his house as well as the house of that other famous Jones, Catherine Zeta Jones. She has a beachfront house in the town of Mumbles but she is rarely there and instead rents it out to a marine biologist.
And so that is the end of this holiday, travel blog and indeed all travel blogs. My retirement has come about for various reasons but I wanted to end the era when there were still people following the blogs as there is no denying that both the interest levels and my own enthusiasm have been dwindling. I’ve always enjoyed writing the blogs but I’ve found that it’s consumed too much time and in some places I feel like I go out for a few hours just so I can go back and write about it in the blog. Sometimes events happen and I wonder how I will describe them in the blog and this affects me from living in the moment and enjoying the actual holiday. The main reason though is that I’ve pretty much been to all the places I want to go and all future holidays will more or less be in similar regions. I could write about them but I will probably end up making the same observations with different words and the freshness and excitement of going to a new place will be lost. When I started out doing this many people hadn’t been to the places I was going and this helped fuel my enthusiasm but nowadays most readers have been to the same places, myself included, and it is much harder to keep the entries up vibe and interesting. I’d really like to thank the long term fans for their patronage through the years (you 3 know who you are) and writing the blog has been a pleasure.
It’s weird how the first few days of a holiday always go very slowly and then suddenly time just flies and its all over. I still remember my first day, chatting up a German girl on the flight over, somehow managing to speak 3 different languages whilst jetlagged and hurling myself to Paris. The highlight was undoubtedly Eurovision and the lowlight the day after when the post Eurovision depression hit and the Princess debacle struck. I enjoyed the bigger cities the most and although I enjoyed going to the Bavarian Alps for the Passion play, the play itself was different to what I expected. I enjoyed meeting some people along the way and traveling with Allan always has its highs, lows and frustrations such that we made a plan to do differently next time. Life has been very task orientated these past few weeks as I’ve searched for hotels, train stations, toilets, supermarkets, restaurants and come to terms with public transport systems whilst trying to see all the sites and stay healthy. It’s been fun, expensive and tiring. I’ve eaten lots of wonderful food as well as some crap food (mainly the chicken & risotto when I actually find it!) and had as much good coffee as I could find. It will be weird not having to do these things for a while but once I get out of the travel groove I will always wonder how I managed to do it all when I look back in 6 months time. I guess I will always have the blog to remind myself. I hope you all enjoyed the journey.
- POD
