Even though we didn't have to check-out until 8:00am Jason though it would be good idea to set the alarm for 6:30am to get up for breakfast and start the day. It's hard to complain about a free breakfast...but they didn't have any muesli available!
After check-out and leaving luggage at the hotel for the day it was off to Caerphilly from Cardiff Central train station. I was considering hiring bikes to ride around instead, but there only seemed to be one place that was quite expensive and required advanced booking and the opening hours weren't ideal. Anyway, Caerphilly is a small town about twenty minutes from Cardiff, there are other small towns even closer than that, Cardiff isn't exactly a metropolis. The town of Caerphilly itself was a lot bigger than expected, it has a few main streets around the town centre and many of the same shops as the bigger cities. Possibly the best discovery however was the big cheese!
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| The big cheese! |
Caerphilly has it's own castle to rival the one in Cardiff, only not as big and not as well maintained. The whole castle was surrounded by a moat, these days probably best utilised for keeping the tourists out. There was a collection of old medieval weapons out in the grounds that looked interesting, but unfortunately none you could actually use. The main tower building looked like one corner was just about to fall over, it had broken apart from the rest of the structure some time ago. The rest was in good condition though and was open to walk around, again there were lots of narrow spiral staircases to navigate, but not many people to get in the way since we turned up just after opening time. There was more to see than it looked like from the outside, I probably spent a little over an hour in all.
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| Outside Caerphilly Castle. |
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| Inside Caerphilly Castle. |
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| The castle wall defense. |
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| Caerphilly. |
I got some food from the local supermarket and then headed up to the top of Caerphilly Mountain for lunch. It was about two kilometres walking up a steep hill road, a bit of a treacherous route because there was no footpath and lots of traffic was going in both directions. The view from the top was good, the town looked further away than just a couple of kilometres, and in another direction it was just possible to make out Cardiff.
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| Caerphilly Mountain. |
After lunch it was a longer walk through the country roads to Castell Coch (also known as Castle Coch). The shortest route was through some empty back roads for about 4.5 kilometres, there was some parallel walking tracks some of the time, but due to recent rain they looked very muddy and slippery.
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| On the way to Castell Coch. |
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| Outside Castell Coch. |
Castell Coch was a lot smaller and more rustic than both of the previous castles, it looked more likely to have been used as a family retreat than anything else. The rooms contained lots of old artwork and decorations again, my favourite was a feature wall with the three fates (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos) because it's about the only bit of Greek mythology I know. That fun was short lived as I smashed my head on a low door frame again, these places definitely weren't built for people six feet or taller. The other highlight was a kind of dungeon room at the bottom of one of the stairwells, which reminded me of the ending of the first Blair Witch Project movie. Other than that this castle wasn't as good as the others.
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| The fates. |
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| Inside Castell Coch. |
Some more walking to reach the nearest station at Taffs Well, about 2.5 kilometres away. This walk wasn't as much fun since it was along some major highway towards the end, but Google Maps came in useful again to explain the best pedestrian path to take.
Since the Cardiff City FC shop had shut down I decided to walk out to the Cardiff City football stadium in the late afternoon. It was about two kilometres until I found the stadium, strangely situated in the middle of a big retail park with an Asda, Costco, Lidl and other smaller stores. The team superstore was more store than super, no magnets and not even any good t-shirts to buy. The detour was a bit of a waste of time then, it was sort of in the opposite direction to the hotel, which meant another 3.5 kilometres back to collect the luggage and head to the train station once again.
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| Cardiff City FC. |
When the train to Manchester pulled up it was already full of people, I only just had time to dump my big suitcase near the entrance and grab one of the last remaining seats. It turned out that this was some kind of combination local and intercity train, so a lot of people actually got off after a few stops - but it was a pretty inconvenient situation for people with luggage and a long journey to have to come aboard to. The train to Manchester:
- Took about 3.5 hours
- I had bread and some tasty chocolate brioche buns for dinner
- There was no power points or wifi on board!
- I discovered I had my camera set to 2 mb 16:9 instead of 13 mb 16:9 or 18 mb 4:3
- At least there was no risk of running out of space!
From the main station at Manchester Piccadilly I walked down to Deansgate to get the light rail (similar to a tram). Google was out of date as the city centre light rail works (like a city loop) had been completed some time in the last year and I could have got straight on to the light rail at Piccadilly instead! The light rail ticket only cost six pounds for Friday night and all weekend, a pretty good bargain. A few stops down to Salford Quays and we made it to the hotel by about 9:00pm.
The hotel review:
- Not too far from city centre
- Rooms almost identical to the other Holiday Inn Express hotels
- Good wifi again
- Free breakfast, but didn't have any newspapers
- No sport TV channels still
- Cardiff
- Tourist Rating - 8 out of 10
- Good
- Castles
- Country areas close by
- Decent city centre area
- Modern bay area
- Lots of dragon flags (Wales flags)
- Bad
- Expensive rail prices
- Less tourist attractions
- Maybe too many castles
- Weird welsh language
- Missed Out
- Bute Park
- Doctor Who experience
- National museum
- Roath Park
- St Fagans museum
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