Cardiff Trip Day 9
Apr. 22nd, 2011 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galadriel1010Time to go home, time to go home...
Couldn't sleep in, because I had to get out of the hostel by 10am. I was out of my room and checked out, but I stopped by the TV room to see if they had a map of the ground floor (I want to build it on Sims and use it as a fic location) and ended up watching Top Gear and talking to people on MSN instead. Still got off pretty early and went straight to the TI office in the old library building to use one of their luggage lockers for my huge bag.
With that stored I pootled around the city centre, poking my nose into some of the arcades and lanes and stopped into Scribbler to buy my brother a birthday card and a gift. Whilst I was in there I got some badges for my hat ("Gay maffia", "Homo", and "Throw me to the lesbians".) and 2m of black ribbon to take down to the Shrine.
Caught another bus, the first one I'd had to pay for for a week as I'd been using a 7 day pass (only £14, and definitely worth it if you're there a while), from halfway down Lloyd George Avenue because my flip flops were rubbing :(
Went straight down to the Shrine, in glorious sunshine, and used the ribbon to attach the stones I bought the day before to it. An old guy offered me a knife to cut the ribbon off, which was kind but not what I wanted to do with it, and someone finally actually asked me what it was all about! I was shocked, a week of visiting there and looking like the sort of person who knew what was going on (taking notes, attaching things, tidying it up, that sort of thing), and listening to people wondering aloud about it, someone asked me directly.
After that, I sat and finished writing my postcards, then posted them and caught a bus back into town. I still had hours to kill until my train, so I went to the St David's Centre for a sundae and then back to the Cardiff Story to study the map of 1913 Cardiff. Went back to the desk to ask for a map to make notes on and ask about Roald Dahl Plass, and the guy I tlaked to was very helpful. Cardiff Bay was heavily industrialised until the 1980s, when compulsary purchase orders were used to buy up the rows of houses where Bute Terrace is now. Railways sidings ran down either side of lloyd George avenue, which was Cardiff's first masonry built dock, built in 1839 for iron and coal-bearing ships. The entrance to this dock was the Oval Basin, a deep lock, which was filled in in the 1960s after the last coal ship left the dock to prevent the walls collapsing. This is why the Hub is so deep.
I'm going to do a details post of things I've found out that may be useful for Torchwood fanfictions later today, if my parents let me...
And then, sadly, I bought some sandwiches, collected my bags and went to the station to catch a train home :(
Couldn't sleep in, because I had to get out of the hostel by 10am. I was out of my room and checked out, but I stopped by the TV room to see if they had a map of the ground floor (I want to build it on Sims and use it as a fic location) and ended up watching Top Gear and talking to people on MSN instead. Still got off pretty early and went straight to the TI office in the old library building to use one of their luggage lockers for my huge bag.
With that stored I pootled around the city centre, poking my nose into some of the arcades and lanes and stopped into Scribbler to buy my brother a birthday card and a gift. Whilst I was in there I got some badges for my hat ("Gay maffia", "Homo", and "Throw me to the lesbians".) and 2m of black ribbon to take down to the Shrine.
Caught another bus, the first one I'd had to pay for for a week as I'd been using a 7 day pass (only £14, and definitely worth it if you're there a while), from halfway down Lloyd George Avenue because my flip flops were rubbing :(
Went straight down to the Shrine, in glorious sunshine, and used the ribbon to attach the stones I bought the day before to it. An old guy offered me a knife to cut the ribbon off, which was kind but not what I wanted to do with it, and someone finally actually asked me what it was all about! I was shocked, a week of visiting there and looking like the sort of person who knew what was going on (taking notes, attaching things, tidying it up, that sort of thing), and listening to people wondering aloud about it, someone asked me directly.
After that, I sat and finished writing my postcards, then posted them and caught a bus back into town. I still had hours to kill until my train, so I went to the St David's Centre for a sundae and then back to the Cardiff Story to study the map of 1913 Cardiff. Went back to the desk to ask for a map to make notes on and ask about Roald Dahl Plass, and the guy I tlaked to was very helpful. Cardiff Bay was heavily industrialised until the 1980s, when compulsary purchase orders were used to buy up the rows of houses where Bute Terrace is now. Railways sidings ran down either side of lloyd George avenue, which was Cardiff's first masonry built dock, built in 1839 for iron and coal-bearing ships. The entrance to this dock was the Oval Basin, a deep lock, which was filled in in the 1960s after the last coal ship left the dock to prevent the walls collapsing. This is why the Hub is so deep.
I'm going to do a details post of things I've found out that may be useful for Torchwood fanfictions later today, if my parents let me...
And then, sadly, I bought some sandwiches, collected my bags and went to the station to catch a train home :(
