Colorado Cruiser: England "Guys Trip" Day 5

We got up this morning to find the an absolutly clear blue sky outside. That is unusual for Mark in Wales, so I took a couple of pictures as proof for a lady at work that was born here. She warned me a couple of times about the weather we were likely to find.

The first place we went was to a laundromat. I only brought 4 changes of clothes and always figured that I'd need to do some laundry at some point on the trip. We drove about 3 miles to a laundry place which wasn't in the best of neighborhoods. It wasn't crime ridden or anything, but it was a little run down. I started a load of whites and colors (aren't you proud of me Nan?) and we started walking around looking for somewhere to get a little breakfast.

We found a bakery several blocks down and bought some pastries and milk then kept walking. About 1/2 mile from the laundrette we saw an old Church of England that was closed and up for sale. It was a little disturbing to see an multi hundred year old building being sold like a bad restaurant.

We put the clothes in to try and walked down the other direction. I was a little suprised to see how many different types of cafe's and restaurants there were. We say Indian, Thai, Chinese, and some others that I don't remember. But we only saw 1 fish & chips. When we got back, all of the clothes were done except for the jeans. I didn't want to try to find more change so we spread the pants out on the back seat, rolled the windows down and headed off.

The first stop was a Chapel we used to go to for Missionary meetings. It looked just like I remembered and still had signs in both English and Welsh out front. Our next stop was one of my favorite places to visit. I probably went there 4 times on my mission. I knew it wasn't far from the chapen, so we put the GPS back into Mountain Bike mode and told it to take us there. Sure enough, within minutes we were on a little country back road zooming through the trees. It wasn't very long, maybe 10 minutes and we arrived at the castle.

Castell Coch used to be a real midevial castle that was used to control boat traffic up and down the nearby river. In 1872 Lord Bute bought the castell and hired the famous architect William Burges to rebuild the castle. It is filled with whimsicle designs and looks almost like a fairytale caste from the highway, poking up through the trees. There were allot of school kids there on a field trip, and I overheard allot of the same whining and grumbling our kids would give if they were going to a museum. At least until they got to the gift shop, then every boy I saw had a wooden sword and was running around having duels and slaying dragons.

Next we headed up to Pontypridd, or more specifically, Pennycraig. I lived over the top of a Post Office for 3 months. It was the first time I was in an area with a car. I got my British license just the month before after my first try (usually it took 2 or 3 tries for a missionary to pass the British test). I remembered that across the street from us was a Chinese/Fish/Chip shop. It was quite unusual at the time, and I was a little homesick for Chinese. We used to get "Chinese Chicken" about once a week and it tasted wonderful. It was just chicken with pineapples and a sweet sauce on top, but it tasted like home to me.

The road back to Pennycraig has really changed. It used to be a tiny two lane (and often one lane) road that wound around beside the train track, but now it is a big 4 lane road with new construction everywhere. But as we got close, I saw the post office right where I remembered it, and across the street was that same old Chinese. We found a parking spot and walked back to get something for lunch.

I got the Chinese chicken which looked and probably tasted exactly the same. I remember it tasting much better, but that's how memory works. Against my advice, Mike got a pasty and chips. He ate the chips but the pasty was pretty inedible. The only place to get a good Pasty is in Cornwall.

Our next stop was Caerphilly Castle. It was one of the few castles in England that saw real battles, sieges, and exchanged hands a few times. It was restored by the city of Caerphilly including all of the massive moats around it. They have some Siege engines, like a trebuchet, mangonell, and balista set up to shoot out over the moat. The audio guide said they were shooting broomstick handles several hundred yards one summer.

Our last stop was Newport where I served the beginning and end of my mission. 11 Godfrey road was a 3 story house that had been converted into 5 seperate apartments with 2 shared bathrooms. There was a coin operated electric meter outside of the bathroom that ran the on demand hot water heater for the shower. You often got a very mild shock while showering, and if you heard the meter "CLUNK " while you were in the shower, you had 2 seconds to get out or get a blast of near freezing water.

After we saw the flat, we should have gone somewhere else fun, but I convinced Mike to go look around downtown Newport. It was nothing like I remembered it being, and none of the shops or the best fish & chips I ever had were to be found. But we kept wandering around hoping to find something fun. Finally I needed a Diet Coke and a bathroom (not in that order) and we decided to duck into a KFC. We had been avoiding all fast food, and especially American fast food throughout the trip so I had to get a shot of Mike buying my soda.

Which brings me to one really sad discovery that I concluded in Newport. Almost all of the traditional Fish & Chip shops that I remember seem to have closed. Yate, Stroud, Bath, and Newport. I didn't find any that I remembered except that lone Chinese in Pennycraig. But we saw allot of Subway, KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut. I guess American Fast Food has won out over British. One night while we watched a bit of TV, the wife in a Sitcom called her husband and told him it was his night for dinner, she wanted pizza and it better not have anchovies. I don't think I ate pizza even once during my entire mission, and now it's a common sitcom joke.

After Newport we decided to avoid the Motorway back to Cardiff. We tried fiddling with the GPS to get it to take us on some back roads, but it kept sending us down busy highways with lots of traffic. We wanted to go find a quiet pub or restaurant out in the country but we had no luck. Finally we asked the GPS to find us a restaurant because we were getting close to Cardiff. It took us to 2 places that had long since closed, and one that just looked bad. Finally I parked on the side of a busy road and said "Lets just walk around." So we walked a ways, and on one corner I saw another closed Church of England with a for sale sign like the morning. Mike looked for a minute and said "That's not another one, that's the same one". We couldn't believe it. After all of the roads, turns, twists and things, we'd driven right back to the neighborhood with the laundrette, and sure enough, we could see it down the road.

We decided to go back to the hotel and ask for advice on a place to eat. They sent us to a Chinese restaurant about a mile away. It was raining so we borrowed umbrellas and walked over. The food was pretty good. We fell to listening to some of the conversations around us, and identified quite a few different languages being spoken. English was the minority.

We went back to the hotel and packed since we would be flying to Paris in the morning.

Cardiff, Wales in March. It's sunny and beautiful