Day 5: Wales – Cardiff
After breakfast we caught the tube with all our luggage to Heathrow, such an easy commute, even at peak time.
At Heathrow we picked up our big black hire bus, we were delighted to see it could accommodate all our luggage easily.
And so our road trip began.
We left London trusting Doris 3, our next generation GPS, fully loaded with UK maps. Our first leg of the journey took us south west out of London along the M3, but due to roadworks we were rerouted through places like Bracknell and Slough. The countryside was pretty, green hillocks, farmlands and flowers littering the side of the road.
We crossed over the The Prince of Wales Bridge over the Severn into Wales and onto our destination, Cardiff.
Cardiff is the capital of Wales and its largest city. We booked into the Lincoln House Hotel, a Victorian house, built in 1900, but restored with modern comforts. It is situated in the beautiful Cathedral Road, a bit like the ‘Chelsea of Cardiff’.
We wasted no time in setting off through the park behind our hotel, the Sofia Gardens, spread behind the Castle grounds. It was a nice long walk along the stream, of the tree lined walkway, passed the Glamorgan cricket grounds and beautiful gardens.
We arrived at the castle to protesters blocking the main road outside the castle. They were singing songs under a green boat. It was bizarre, the most peaceful protest ever, with the protesters handing out flyers apologizing for the disruption. It turned out it was for global warming and this was their last resort, a noble cause I thought (Robs came close to joining them). Certainly this was worlds apart from a South African protest but it still seemed to irritate the locals.
From the castle we wandered into town and up and down the streets, a mixture of old and new, shops and churches and markets. We tried welsh cakes, a delicious mixture of shortbread cross scone. We walked past the Millennium Stadium and to the Queens Vault for a well deserved drink. We then headed to Vivo Latino for a delicious dinner.
On our stroll home, through the beautiful streets, we came across the Cricketer, a beautiful pub, voted the best in town, so we had to have a nightcap. Arriving back at our hotel around 10pm as the sun set.
Pandas in Africa 