Cardiff

Today is Day 11 of our trip and perhaps the first day that we’re not on the road and don’t have a lot planned. We’re starting to run short of clean clothes. A good day to find a launderette and do our washing. We found one a few streets away from where we’re staying. Marg and I loaded up two machines. While she waited for the wash cycles to end, I went for a walk down the street. Once again, we had been blessed with amazing weather. Nothing but sunshine and blue skies this morning.

We returned to our rooms to pack away all the freshly laundered clothes. Marg took advantage of our more relaxed touring schedule to catch up on some rest, while Rod, Cornelia, Ursula and I walked through Sophia Gardens, across the River Taff and through Bute Park into the heart of the city. We wandered down the busy High Street until we turned into Royal Arcade and found a really nice coffee roastery, Uncommon Ground Coffee, where we stopped for lunch. It’s Marg’s custom, when travelling and time permits, to find a wool store and often buy some wool. Sometimes she’ll crochet with in on our travels and other times she’ll bring it home and save it until she finds a suitable pattern. Rod saw there was a wool store in the Central Market between our lunch spot and our next spot, the castle, so we called in on our way to check it out. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to stand in for Marg on this occasion. Though I didn’t really know what I was doing, I asked the lady behind the counter for something Marg could crochet a cowl with that was soft, local and only required one ball. She showed me a finished sample, and I thought that would be okay, so I bought a ball of the yarn and brought it back to the accommodation. I was both pleased and relieved when Marg gave it the tick of approval. I’m interested to see what she can do with it.

We walked over to Cardiff Castle, where we had entry tickets we’d purchased online from Australia. The origins of the castle date back to Roman times, and some parts were built by the Normans, but the parts of the castle I was looking forward to seeing were those parts renovated by the Third Marquess of Bute during the late 1800s. Six years ago, Marg and I had visited the castle on a bus tour, and we’d had a fantastic guided tour through all the rooms of the Marquess’s private rooms. He’d inherited the castle from his wealthy father, and had employed a leading Victorian architect to renovate the apartments he personally used, with a licence to be innovative. Here’s how I described this part of the castle in my blog post of 2019:

“The resulting modifications to the old castle brought about one of the most extravagant castles in the British Isles – in fact, probably in all of Europe. Room after room became a kaleidoscope of colours and shapes, with painted and tiled walls illustrating biblical scenes, fairy tales and characters from literature. The texts on the walls represented the many different languages the Marquess spoke. He had one of the world’s first flushing water closets. He had a bedroom with a mirrored ceiling. He even had a room dedicated to Geoffrey Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales. On the floor of one room the tiles were laid out in the formation of a maze, where the Marquess could wander around, lost in meditation. He was an opium addict, and no doubt some of his design ideas must have come to him while he was in an opium-induced state of consciousness.”

We followed the arrows through the Arab Room, the Banqueting Hall, the Small Dining Room and the Library. Each was spectacular in its own way, and I was looking forward to visiting the other amazing rooms I remembered from my previous visit, but when the next arrow directed me to go down stairs rather than up, I knew something was wrong. As there was nowhere else to go, I followed the stairs and soon found myself outside the building, standing next to a sign thanking me for visiting. WTF, I thought. There should be much more than this. I walked back into the entryway and asked the guy checking tickets about the main bedroom, roof garden and the other rooms I remembered. “Oh,” he said, “they’re only available if you take the guided tour option.” What a bummer. They were the best part. I wish that had been made clearer on the website when I purchased the tickets. I was so disappointed, that I took little interest in the Norman keep, though I found myself entertained by the bird life in the moat that surrounds it. Rod pointed out that there were tunnels from WWII in another corner of the site that we could explore. Cardiff suffered significant bomb damage during the war, and it must have been very frightening for the citizens every night the German planes came over the city. When that happened, people were encouraged to come to the tunnels for shelter. They had some food preparation facilities there, basic beds and long bench seating. I imagine they might have managed to get a good number of Cardiff’s citizens underground and sheltered there during the heavy bombing raids. When Rod and I first entered the tunnel, a the frightening high pitched sound of bombs falling was played through a sound sytem. When I heard that horrible sound, seemingly directly above me, it made me shiver. It must have been so scary huddled with friends and family in the tunnel, listening to the bombs falling above your head.

After leaving the castle, we headed in the direction of our accommodation. One of the first things we saw was the Animal Wall, where realistic sculptures of 14 different animals adorn the top of the wall. We re-entered the park and retraced our steps from the morning walk, which brought us back to our accommodation again. Marg was feeling better when I arrived, and was delighted with the yarn that I’d bought her. She soon found the correct crochet hook to match the sie of the yarn, and, within minutes she had begun a new project.