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A Tale of Three Cities, part 2: Cardiff
by Neil Matthews

How do you get two whales in a Mini? Down the M4, of course. As the owner of a Mini, I derived a perverse pleasure from bringing this particularly old quip to life by visiting Cardiff for a weekend in February 2006. The journey was swift and smooth, although it was scarcely a pleasure to be charged £4.90 just to get into Wales.

Cardiff itself soon beckoned. This was the first time I had ever stayed in a hotel based on a trading estate. The Future Inn, on Hemingway Road, has only just been built and is therefore suitably high rise and shiny. Roadsigns since the Severn Bridge had used English and Welsh, but the voice of the hotel lift stuck resolutely to English only. The most futuristic element of the hotel was probably the easy Internet and webmail access in the rooms. On the other hand, some elements of traditional service were present: biscuits in the rooms - always a good sign - and, less positively, the extraordinary difficulty in obtaining a pot of tea with breakfast.

The future - or at least the vision of the future - for the city lies in Cardiff Bay, a previously down at heel area which has benefited from substantial redevelopment in recent years. The bay itself, all steel and silver with a plethora of smart bars and restaurants, made for an attractive spectacle in the cold winter sunshine. The windows of the nearby Millennium Centre, a performing arts venue (not to be confused with the Millennium Stadium), are shaped to create a bilingual message. The English version, shorter than the Welsh, reads: “In these stones, horizons sing.” Presumably this refers to the fictitious horizons of the many theatrical and musical productions which the Centre hosts. On that basis, and feeling charitable because of the sunshine, I decided not to send in the words to Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner, and to overlook the hideous purple stone cladding around the edges of the Centre.

Cardiff’s national and international profile is on the up, for various reasons. The aforementioned Millennium Stadium has hosted FA Cup Finals and promotion playoffs for the English football leagues while Wembley Stadium was first demolished and then rebuilt. It is also the home venue for the Welsh rugby union team, which won its first Grand Slam for over 25 years in 2005; and Sophia Gardens is set to host its first cricket Test match in 2009. On the media side of things, BBC Wales has been responsible for some of Britain’s best known TV productions in recent years, notably the revitalised Doctor Who as re-imagined by Swansea boy Russell T Davies. A small free exhibition of some of the sets and costumes from the show, which is filmed primarily in Cardiff, made for a diverting hour or so. Children aged between 5 and 15 swarmed round to gawp at Slitheen, Daleks and so on. A missing E caused the sign at the main entrance to proclaim, in Freudian fashion, that Doctor Who is “Mad in Wales”.

However, when we ventured into the centre of Cardiff itself rather than the bay, a different picture emerged. Many British town and city centres now look more and more similar, with the chain stores conquering all before them. I wonder whether other cities also have café restaurants with quite as much 1970s brown as the one in which we ate our Saturday lunch. Even Peter Mandelson would have found it hard to confuse mushy peas for guacamole here. The city centre is also home to an inordinate number of shoe shops. If you seek knee length pink fluffy boots for ladies, then this is the place to come. There was a surprising number of stretch limos cruising the streets, and several gangs of women dressed somewhat optimistically, considering that this was Britain in February. Taken together, perhaps these pieces of evidence point to an exciting future for Cardiff as the hen party capital of Europe. Charlotte Church may have much for which to answer.

The legacy of conquerors and visitors from another age is visible at Cardiff Castle. The castle was first established by the Romans in the 1st century AD and passed through the hands of various aristocratic families, and most famously the 1st Marquess of Bute in the 18th century. By then, the castle house had fallen into disrepair and the castle fortifications were decaying. The 1st Marquess employed an architect to begin a sympathetic restoration. His grandson, the 2nd Marquess, opened the Bute West Dock in Cardiff, bringing in a period of industrial expansion and prosperity.

The most conspicuous effects of the Bute family on the Castle as it stands today, however, are attributable to the 3rd Marquess, an eccentric with a passion for building and restoration. He employed William Burges as architect over 15 years to turn the Castle into a neo-Gothic fantasy. Not all the rooms were open at the time of our visit, but those which were open could not be accused of being understated. The Winter Smoking Room in the Clock Tower uses zodiac signs, stained windows of Norse gods and carved friezes to illustrate a theme of “Time”. The walls of the Nursery Room depict Aladdin, Ali Baba, Jack and the Beanstalk and many others. The wooden window screens and ceiling of the Arab Room are complemented with carvings of eight parrots of various types. Whether the 3rd Marquess had more money than taste is, perhaps, open to debate. However, the Castle must have been an inspiring home for the College of Music and Drama, which resided there from 1949-1974.

The briefness of our visit did not give time to see much else of Cardiff. But, returning home by a less direct route than the M4, we were able to pay a brief visit to Tintern Abbey. The ruins of the abbey lie between the A466 and the River Wye. Tintern Abbey was founded by Cistercian monks in 1131 AD and, by 1301, around 400 monks lived in the complex. After 1536, when the Abbey was part of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, the building began to decay.

Around 1760 the site was cleaned up and visitors to the Wye Valley began to be entranced with the beauty of the site and surroundings. The most famous visitor was William Wordsworth in 1798. His poem Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey put Tintern firmly on the tourist map.

Even a freezing morning and scaffolding on part of the ruins could not detract from the simple magic of the location. As long as some ruins remain, and as long as Wordsworth is still read, Tintern will be a magnet for visitors from round the world.

First published in VISA issue 68 (August 2006). Part 1 covered Edinburgh. Part 3 featured Belfast.