The easiest path to Cardiff from home is flying out to Heathrow, take the train to Paddington and from there the train to Cardiff. I had planned with an hour from arriving in London to catch my connection to Paddington so it was absolutely wonderful to find out the flight was delayed for almost an hour.
The scheduled 2-hour flight ended up being 1½ hours, and rushing through the airport (why do you always arrive at the one of the furthest away gates when you are in a hurry??) a couple of dense and slowpokes in the automatic passport gates did their best to delay me, but I still made it to the platform with 5 minutes to spare. Considering the size of the airport I was pretty impressed with that.
The train to Paddington went swimmingly, and apart from maybe 10 minutes’ delay the connecting 2 hour train to Cardiff was a satisfyingly relaxing adventure. From Cardiff central it was a short 10-minute walk to the hotel where I checked in at around 2130.
An hour later after settling into one of the smallest hotel rooms I have ever been in I went for a short walk to take in the surrounding area in the dark. Turns out I’m less than 10 minutes from Cardiff Castle which is where the run will start and finish so at least that will be easy on race day.
The following morning I left the hotel and went to the castle where I got myself a ticket for a tour of the castle which for an hour brought us around in the main building where we were presented to some of the rooms. The were all gorgeous and beautifully decorated – and lots of symbolism and references. The children’s room had the walls lined with painted characters from numerous fairytales. The men’s drinking/smoking room has decorated with zodiac signs relative to the seasons, the people the weekdays are named after and the cycle of the sun and the moon and “their” gods/personifications – the theme of the room being time. Another room’s theme was John the Elder (the guy that wrote the last book in the bible). Greek, Latin, English, Runes, hieroglyphs, Hebrew and other were all represented in one form or another. The 3rd Marquess of Bute (who was at the time considered the richest man in Britain if not the world) who ordered the remodeling of the castle under the architect William Burges knew 23 languages and wanted to be able to enjoy the bible as originally as possible. We also came through a roof garden, a small dining room (where you’d call on the staff by pressing a button disguised as a carved squirrel’s nut – a nut in its mouth, that is), the large social hall all castles have, a room where you went to talk after dinner which was also where the tour ended. This is called the drawing room – not because you draw in the room, but because you withdraw yourself from the dinner and in here afterwards.
Leaving the building you passed through the library which still held a lot of old books in various languages. Coming outside it had started drizzling on and off which didn’t prevent me taking a walk on and inside the battlements (the insides had been offered up and used as bomb shelters during WW2) and the central keep. The latter was basically now an uncovered circular wall which previously had been filled with small buildings on the inside lining the wall. I finished off in the war museum which presented a historical walkthrough of Welch and British military.
About to leave I realized it was pouring down so I ended up staying for lunch. Having finished lunch and it was still pouring down I decided I couldn’t be bothered to wait for it to stop so I left and had a walk down to Mermaid Quay to have a look around. Walking around I realized that my insistence on not being holed away in a hotel room when travelling was being trumped by the weather, so mid-afternoon I returned to my room where I stayed until dinner (where it fortunately had stopped raining).
The ventilation in the hotel room is almost non-existent. There is a vent in the bathroom but it is small and can barely cope after having a shower. I managed to figure out how to turn on the radiator and used that to try and dry my clothes, though it’s making the room both hot and humid. I guess it’s still better than having to wear soaked clothes when going out.
The expo for the run was basically just for international runners as GB runners apparently had their kit sent to them instead. So I was told to pick up my kit at the expo on Saturday at 0800-1000 or 1300-1800. I never made it out the door to be there in the morning (what a surprise!) so I relaxed and had a walk in Bute Park all the way to Haily Park. At that point it had gone past noon and with no breakfast or lunch yet I thought it would be time to return and find something to eat.
I got all the way back to the City Hall and the expo – there had been a lot of talk and writing about gathering at the expo and seeing al the sponsors and booths but the only thing that was open when I arrived was a tent where I collected my kit without an issue. The t-shirt is a finisher shirt so I won’t be getting that until I cross the finish line. The problem with that is that if you finish late (there is a 4½ hour limit) there is a risk that your size is gone if too many grabbed a size they hadn’t been registered for. Apparently it happened at the Royal Parks HM when I ran it. I got my stuff, got something to eat and being mid-afternoon at that point I retuned to the hotel to relax. I went out in the evening for dinner close by, but apart from that I spent the rest of the day being fantastically unproductive.
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