Cardiff - home of Dr Who
My recommendation for a good cafe in Cardiff is 'Coffee Barker' in the Castle Arcade. This arcade has two entrances, one of which comes out opposite Cardiff Castle. The arcade has two levels and contains art shops and specialty food shops. Coffee Barker is around half-way along the section at right angles to St Mary Street.
At the cafe, I ordered a toasted cheese and ham sandwich and a banana milkshake. The shake was presented in a pint milk bottle with a straw. Both sandwich and milkshake hit the spot. My armchair was comfortable and snug and I had tremendous difficulty rising when the cafe was closing. The toilets are downstairs.
I had visited the new buildings built around Cardiff Bay including the Millennium Centre, The Welsh Senate (Senedd), Roald Dahl Plass, and the statue commemorating Captain Scott’s failed bid to be the first person to reach the South Pole. On 15 June 1910, Scott's ship Terra Nova, an old converted whaler, set sail from Cardiff Bay for Antarctica.
The Pierhead and the Norwegian Church Arts Centre are also worth visiting in this area. Bus number 6 will get you to Cardiff Bay from the city centre. On the way back, stay on the bus for a short city tour past Central and Queen Street train stations, the main museums, and Cardiff Castle. If the weather is good walk along by the Animal Wall near the castle and enter Bute Park to get away from the crowds.
Opened in 2004, The Millennium Centre was designed by architect Jonathan Adams, using traditional Welsh slate with purple, green, and grey tones. A bronzed steel shell sits like a saddle over the slate. Phrases in Welsh and English, by the poet Gwyneth Lewis, are spelled out in three lines above the main entrance, using 2-metre high letters. Both languages appear on each of the three lines and I found this quite difficult to understand during the day - it reads as follows:
CREU GWIR IN THESE STONES
FEL GWYDR HORIZONS
O FfWRNAIS AWEN SING
It is much clearer at night, but even then I thought the English was a translation of the Welsh, which it most definitely isn’t. CREU GWIR FEL GWYDR O FfWRNAIS AWEN translates into English as “Creating truth like glass from inspiration’s furnace”. The Millennium Centre is the home of many cultural organisations including Welsh National Opera, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and Hijinx Theatre.
Nearby is the Senedd, where the National Assembly of Wales meets from 1:30 pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This building, designed by Richard Rogers, is another beautiful construction using concrete, glass, steel, and slate. Red cedar lines an undulating canopy roof. The gutter system gathers rainwater, which is then used to flush the building’s toilets, and a rotating cowl on the roof provides ventilation for the building. 27 pipes were drilled 100m below ground, so during cold spells, water can be pumped through the pipes and heated to 14 °C by geothermal energy. I hoped that the building was used for many other activities, besides the National Assembly, as this seems like a lot of environmental features for a building that’s mainly used on just two afternoons/evenings per week.
Roald Dahl Plass is the former basin of the West Bute Dock, which extended almost to Cardiff City Centre in its heyday, with room for nearly three hundred ships. The Plass has been used as a set in many Doctor Who and Torchwood programmes and is close to the Doctor Who Experience.
Roald Dahl was born in Cardiff to Norwegian parents and was christened in the Norwegian Church, originally built in 1868 to minister to the needs of Norwegian sailors. Roald Dahl was president of the trust that renovated the church, which is now an Arts Centre.
The church is close to the sculpture 'Antarctica 100 Memorial', which commemorates the crew of the ship 'Terra Nova', who died on the Scott expedition to the South Pole. This beautiful, smooth sculpture shows a sledge being man-hauled across an ice floe, the faces of the of men trapped in the ice, the tent, and the ice cave. The sculpture was created by Cardiff sculptor Jonathan Williams and is close to the Roath dock gates, from where the 'Terra Nova’ set sail at the outset of the fateful expedition.
Even on a sunny day, this is a chilling memorial to the men who died and I shivered as I remembered seeing one of the sleds taken by Scott to the Antarctic. The sled weighed 75 pounds on its own and was made from solid oak - imagine hauling a fully laden sled from Scott’s Hut on the north shore of Cape Evans on Ross Island, across the Ross Ice Shelf, before climbing nearly 8000ft on the Beardmore Glacier to the Antarctic Plateau and then onwards to the South Pole. That is a journey of 900 miles and then they had to come back the same way.
The Pierhead building was built in 1897 and appears to have been built to show off the wealth of the area to the passing ships and their crews unless the clock tower, nicknamed the Welsh Big Ben, allowed them to set their clocks and watches to local time.
I caught the Number 6 bus back to the centre of Cardiff and alighted near the Castle, so I could visit Bute Park. The Castle was on my right and the central shopping area on my left. People were lying on the grass with their backs against the castle walls, eating their sandwiches, and enjoying the late summer sunshine. Once past the castle heading westwards, the pedestrian sees a rather unusual sight, called the Animal Wall, forming the southern boundary of Bute Park. The Animal Wall is a Grade 1 listed structure, meaning it is of exceptional interest and can’t be altered without permission from the British Government. Other Grade 1 listed structures in the UK include York Minster, Tower Bridge over the Thames, and Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. The 6-foot high Animal Wall is in lofty company in architectural significance, although it dates from only 1890. The Wall mimics a 100-metre long castle battlement with the crenellations appearing at regular intervals between the higher merlons. The 15 animals appear on top of every second merlon and have their front paws resting on the stone, so most of them stare down at you from a height of about 7 - 8 feet. The hyena looks particularly mean and the leopard seems ready to pounce on any visitor who outstays their welcome.
The original nine animal figures were the ape, bear, hyena, lions (2), lioness, lynx, seal, and wolf. Originally, the animals were painted, but this paint was removed during later renovations. In 1922, the wall was moved about 50 metres from outside Cardiff Castle to its present location due to road widening in front of the castle. In 1931, a further six animals were added; the anteater, beaver, leopard, pelican, raccoons, and vulture. The latest restoration of the animals began in July 2010; the anteater's snout, which had been missing since the late 1990s, was replaced as well as the missing glass eyes in the nine original animals.
Just inside the gatehouse of Bute Park is Pettigrew Tea Rooms where lovely cups of tea are served in fine china cups. You can choose your own sandwich fillings and whether or not you want fruit in your scone. Bute Park has plenty of paths for you to walk off the calories taken on board at the tea rooms. The park merges with other green spaces such as Sophia Gardens and Llandaff Fields to extend nearly a mile and a half northwards on the east bank of the River Taff. Near to the castle are a stone circle, made up of gorsedd stones, which commemorate the 1978 Eisteddfod and the 13th-Century ruins of Blackfriars Priory, which was destroyed in 1404 by Owain Glyndwr, rebuilt, but vacated during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538.