Cardiff - 12th & 13th April 2008

We heard from Shaun that he and Annabel would be in Cardiff for the weekend, so we thought we would go down and see them and Tad who is currently studying in Cardiff.

So in the wee hours of Saturday morning (about 8:30am) we headed off on the series of motorways linking Hull and Cardiff, a journey of about 250 miles. We stopped about half way, at a set of motorway services on the M42 just south of Birmingham, and noticed an awful lot cars were parked in the car park. A lot of British cars in fact. It turns out that it was exactly 1 year to the day that the Longbridge factory shut down, and so a ‘Pride of Longbridge’ day was being held. A whole platoon of Rovers, Austins, MGs and other BMC orphans had gathered in the car park and were then driving to Longbridge in commemoration of the history of the plant and the cars built there. If only we had taken our mini, we may never have made it to Cardiff.



We booked a night in the same hotel in which Shaun and Annabel were staying, so we met up with them at the hotel and went to the new developments around Cardiff Bay for some lunch. Cardiff Bay houses the Millennium Centre, a performing arts centre with quite striking architecture.

After lunch we headed into town to meet up with Tad. Cardiff is quite compact and with a population of around 300,000, not much bigger than Hull. The five of us had a lovely stroll around the Millenium Stadium, the Castle and Bute Park before retiring to the hotel to freshen up and make arrangements for dinner.

It was obviously a busy night in Cardiff as no restaurants could fit a reservation for five in until nine o’clock, so we ended up meeting up in the bar at the hotel, which was quite nice, for a pub meal and a few drinks. It turns out that we must have been quite thirsty, as we eventually poured Tad into a cab at 3am before the long journey back to our beds. Thank goodness the hotel had an elevator! That one flight of stairs was probably insurmountable.

After a quick kip and a nice greasy breakfast we were back on the road.