Day 50
Barry to Cardiff: 15 miles
Food of the Day: Wagamama Ramen
Reason: I've been having a lot of pub food these days.
So the first part of this walk was 'getting out of Barry' - i.e. a lot of city streets until Swanbridge and supposedly easy walking toward Cardiff. So of course I immediately got lost, ending up far uphill in Cadoxton when I was supposed to be at the docks. Of course my natural tendency to go downhill meant eventually, just as I was about to give up, I suddenly found myself at the docks in front of a tiny Wales Coast Path sticker. Lucky.
All about the Italians
After successfully getting out of Barry, Cadoxton, and the docks, I made my way along the coastline to Swanbridge, where I stopped in the seaside pub there to try to cool down. I successfully managed to sit in front of a window that didn't open and ended up with my face sweating even more than when I'd come in.
Anyway, the pub had great food, and I ordered a Sam Adams to make myself more at home. Then I proceeded to eavesdrop on the Italian family chattering away next to me. I tried to make them understand I understood them by saying hello in Italian - but they honestly didn't seem to care that I was listening to them. I won't go into what they were talking about - but I was wondering what they were doing there. As far as I could remember, the main attraction of Swanbridge was Sully Island, which is connected to the mainland at lower tides and has a tide clock indicating when it's safe to go out (but according to the local Barry newspaper - several sets of tourists still had to be saved in the channel this month).
Then as I walked along and eventually hit Lavernock, I thought maybe I found a reason why Italians would think this place was interesting. Because Lavernock is the place where the world's first radio signal was sent from - by Italian Giugliemo Marconi in 1897. I don't know if that would be a draw for visiting Italians, but since we're constantly underestimated in the famous inventions area, I imagine it could be.
A Charming Promenade, an Antarctic Expedition and Roald Dahl
Continuing on was a perfectly nice walk - although it was starting to get more busy. In Penarth there was a giant monument celebrating the Wales Coast Path, as well as one of the trees the artist Sisley is famous for painting. But the main attraction in Penarth is its pier and promenade. Originally from the late 19th century, by the 1990s the area was falling apart. Enter a giant renovation. And the result is a beautiful, bright series of Edwardian and Victorian buildings overlooking a stunning Art Deco pier. I wanted to stop, but I also knew Cardiff seemed deceptively close - it isn't actually a few miles still - and that I still had to walk over the Cardiff Bay Barrage.
So I set off out of Penarth and eventually got to the Barrage - this is a half mile long dam-bridge type thing that turned what had been a giant mud flat into a massive lake. Key to Cardiff's recent waterside regeneration effort, the Barrage has the largest fish run in Europe (to allow certain fish to go upstream to breed), and a system that raises different stretches of the road that passes over it so boats can pass underneath. Of course as soon as I set foot on it, the alarms went off and the road lifted up in front of me. It was actually interesting to watch even though it delayed me a bit.
Continuing along the views of Cardiff Bay get even lovelier, but I what I found most interesting was the giant set of placards giving the blow by blow of the doomed Sir Robert Falcon Scott mission to the south pole in 1910. That mission had left from Cardiff, and Scott had had the ship the Terra Nova based in Cardiff to thank the townspeople for their generosity.
But the panels tell the story of their time in Cardiff, and the run for the pole. Basically after killing all their horses, abandoning their motorized sledges and tying themselves in and pulling their sledges themselves for several hundred miles in -40-ish degree weather, Scott's small team got to the south pole only to find the Norwegians had gotten there first. The pictures from the expedition are kind of heartbreaking - especially since the panels also give you the information through the medium of Scott's diary entries. Because, after a series of missteps and Edgar Evan's death, they got caught in a blizzard only 17 miles back from base camp, and died. And his diary reflects that they'd accepted they were going to die, and the only way anyone knows the story is from unearthing their bodies and all the articles they'd brought with them. There's also a nice sculpture closer to the Bay - I just found the whole thing really sad, but well done.
Anyway, in cheerier news, if you keep walking toward Cardiff you'll find some absolutely crazy architecture (and the Doctor Who Experience, if you're so inclined). I'm not entirely sure what all the buildings were, but I'm fairly certain one is the Welsh Assembly (Wales wasn't allowed it's own Parliament until the 90s), and of course there's the giant Milennium Center - made entirely of different contrasting Welsh materials like slate, the front of this arts building has giant letters composing a poem in Welsh and English that says "In these stones, horizons sing [English]' and 'Creating truth like glass, from the furnace of inspiration [Welsh]'.
In slight contrast to these (and the ferris wheel) is the white Norwegian church. Originally built to serve Norwegian sailors - the church is now famous because Cardiff children's author Roald Dahl was christened here, as his parents were Norwegian immigrants.
Of course, I saw most of these buildings from the outside only. That's because I was heading straight toward the giant refurbished shopping area, where I went straight into Wagamama and ordered 4 different drinks in a futile effort to cool down. Local food be damned, I wanted two smoothies, soda water and beer with ginger with my ramen. Cities do have occasional benefits I guess - for me it's mostly asian food.
