Wynmelvin » Cardiff http://blog.wynmelvin.com [ the blog ] Sat, 06 Aug 2011 10:15:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 en hourly 1 October 23rd, 2009 http://blog.wynmelvin.com/2009/10/october-23rd-2009/ http://blog.wynmelvin.com/2009/10/october-23rd-2009/#comments Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:05:00 +0000 Russell http://blog.wynmelvin.com/?p=704 CARDIFF — I walked back into the city centre this morning and visited Cardiff Castle. The castle grounds are very spacious what with the castle’s surrounding earthworks having been built over the top of the walls of a Roman fort giving it a square shape. I climbed to the top of the keep to get some good views across Cardiff before taking a tour through the castle apartments.

I spent the afternoon wandering about town window shopping, especially around St David’s. Presumably to accompany the opening of the St David’s Shopping Centre there was a fashion show on a catwalk erected down the middle of Working Street (a pedestrian-only precinct). There were also a couple of ballerinas on stilts wandering through the crowd. You wouldn’t think there was a recession in progress with the number of people in town. Mind you, I didn’t help spend Britain out of trouble as I’m now having to seriously think about the weight of my luggage.

]]> http://blog.wynmelvin.com/2009/10/october-23rd-2009/feed/ 0 October 22nd, 2009 http://blog.wynmelvin.com/2009/10/october-22nd-2009/ http://blog.wynmelvin.com/2009/10/october-22nd-2009/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:49:01 +0000 Russell http://blog.wynmelvin.com/?p=693 CARDIFF — I left St Clears with the windscreen wipers going but it wasn’t long before the sun came out. My first stop was at Burry Port as this was where my grandmother’s brother had once lived. I managed to find the street and the house without too much trouble but finding a park was another matter.

Later I went down to Burry Port’s harbour, which seems to be the sole preserve of pleasure craft, and discovered that Burry Port was where Amelia Earhart came ashore from a seaplane after crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 1928.

Leaving Burry Port I passed through Llanelli before joining the motorway for a short distance to quickly pass through the built-up area around Swansea and Neath. My next stop was at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, a park set aside for its conservation value. They also have a reconstructed medieval village within the park which, like yesterday’s iron-age fort, was built over the original foundations. This time it was just me, and some geese, ducks, and chickens.

I managed to get on the right road to my hotel, went left at the large roundabout, right at the small roundabout but then missed the first slip road that I was supposed to take. Luckily I had a Google map that I had printed before leaving home that showed more detail than the road atlas and I managed to arrive at the hotel without further trouble.

I walked into town to grab something to eat and stumbled across St David’s—a brand new shopping centre covering a third of Cardiff’s city centre. It had opened today.

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