Day 67: Cardiff

Today is my Cardiff day.

I went to St. Fagan’s National History Museum for the morning. It is an open air museum consisting of forty three re-erected buildings from various locations in Wales. It is in the grounds of an Elizabethan castle called Fagan’s castle and at £5 for the parking and no fee to spend the day there, I thought it was excellent value for money.

There were all kinds of buildings all in their original state.

Shops...

An old fairground...

Lots of farm buildings from different eras...

A toll booth...

There is a 1960s monstrosity of a building that looks like a 1960 secondary school or college building. It is currently being worked on because ugly though it seems now, in its day it won awards for its modern architecture. The museum is planning to develop it for workshops space, for a gallery and a proper restaurant. There were lots of builders around.

This red painted building – a farmhouse,  had scaffolding going up so the roof could be re-thatched.

There is a terrace of miners houses from Merthyr Tydfil, and a wonderful tailors shop that still had all the clothes and shoes intact from the 1940’s

An old pub called The Vulcan has been taken down from its original site in Adamsdown Cardiff, and will be rebuilt brick by brick here over the next year or so. 

Gardeners are employed to plant appropriate gardens and there are three farmers who are employed to look after all the livestock that are also here: sheep, cows, chickens and in the miners row of houses, racing  pigeons.

TV crews often come to film and today was no exception.

At just £5 for the car park it was great value for money.

In the afternoon I went sight seeing in Cardiff starting with Cardiff Bay where I saw the Millenium centre.

I parked in Cathedral Road where there are imposing houses, some of which are flats or private homes, whilst others are hotels and business premises.

 

A walk through Bute Park...

brought me into the city centre and the castle

The walls around the castle had a variety of stone creatures that looked as though they were trying to get out

Cardiff is a capital city with all the shops one expects but it also had several Victorian shopping arcades with very individual shops.

In Scotland buskers had bagpipes – here it was the harp.

Today was graduation day for the students of Cardiff University and the town was not only full of students in caps and gowns

but the ceremony was being simultaneously televised and shown on screens in the town centre.

No pressure there then!!

There are huge shopping centres – several – and I walked myself to a standstill. Glad to get back to put my feet up as I have a long journey to Ilfracombe tomorrow.