We have had a couple of busy days with Ash and Max. Today, we started by visiting Dragon Motorcycles in Cardiff to see how the GS was doing on its service work. It is in good shape and I will pick it up tomorrow, Thursday. It's a local shop owned and run by a father and son that handles a lot of overflow work from the BMW shop so they know what they're doing.
We then went to the downtown Cardiff pier area including visiting the Makers Guild Wales. They are a local non-profit with a beautiful shop in the pier area that exhibits art made in Wales. We were impressed with the quality of the art, Sooz may return tomorrow.
The Pierhead Building is close by and we did a quick visit of it. The Pierhead Building is a Grade I listed building in Cardiff Bay, Wales. It was built in 1897 as the headquarters for the Bute Dock Company. The Pierhead Building is part of the estate of the Senedd, which also includes the Senedd building and Tŷ Hywel. The clock on the building is unofficially known as the "Baby Big Ben" or the "Big Ben of Wales".
Next, Max drove us about an hour northwest from Cardiff to Henrhyd Falls, a National Trust 90-foot-high waterfalls in a scenic valley accessed via a bridge & footpath. Everyone told us it was an easy walk to the falls and of course it wasn't that easy, but we made it there and back. We also visited a petting farm nearby. Max and Ash dropped Sooz and me back at the apartment, and they went back out. Youth!
Yesterday, we had afternoon tea at the Bute Park Cafe in Cardiff right next to the Cardiff Castle. It was really fun and we tried not to act like obnoxious Americans. There was a lot of food, with sandwiches, scones, biscuits, chocolate and cakes. There was too much food for us to eat at the one setting so we brought a lot home with us and had it for breakfast this morning.
Next, was a visit to St. Fagans National Museum of History. It is an outdoor museum located on approximately 100 acres. The museum stands in the grounds of the magnificent St Fagans Castle and gardens, a late 16th-century manor house donated to the people of Wales by the Earl of Plymouth in 1948. Since 1948 over forty original buildings from different historical periods have been re-erected in the 100-acre parkland, among them houses, a farm, a school, a chapel and a splendid Workmen's Institute. We had fun conversations with a couple of the docents who lived in the area.
Martyn worked 16 years in the coal mines before becoming a detective with the local police in his hometown, Aberfan, Wales. This is the town that had a tragic landslide/avalanche. The avalanche wasn’t snow—it was coal waste that had slid down a rain-saturated mountainside. On October 21, 1966, nearly 140,000 cubic yards of black slurry cascaded down the hill above Aberfan. It destroyed everything it touched, eventually killing 144 people, most of them children sitting in their school classrooms.
Last evening Max drove us to Ogmore-By-The-Sea. Ash had seen some videos on the town which has a stone structure right by the Bristol Channel which leads to the Celtic Sea and Atlantic Ocean. It is a beautiful, Welsh shoreline with more rocks than sand but that didn't keep a couple of surfers out of the water.
Having afternoon tea at Bute Park Cafe
Woah! Those people look super cool :o Wales looks nice too, of course
ReplyDeleteGood job driving!!!!!
ReplyDeleteGOOD JOB DRIVING MAX !! HEADS WOULD ROLL AT DRAGON MOTORS IF MY SHOP WAS THAT MESSY !
ReplyDeleteMAX GET OUT YOUR WALLET FOR PARKING TICKET, THAT IS NOT GAINSVILLE AFETR ALL. AND INTERESTING THAT THAT LITTLE BIKE SHOP HAS A TIRE MACHINE AND COMPUTER BALLANCER. I MIGHT HAVE BEEN TO HARSH. NO ITS STILL TO MESSY FOR CLARK MOTORS STANDARDS
ReplyDelete