I'm doing really well with moving on with a lot of ongoing, long term challenges but the one which is furthest behind so far is No.7 - Weatherman Walks: 50 miles of Derek Brockway Welsh hikes. No particular reason for this, just had other things to do at weekends, particularly now the football season has started again. So, with Stewart taking a couple of days off work this week I decided to join him today and we agreed we'd go out another Weatherman's Walks.
Today we'd be doing the only urban one of Derek's Weatherman Walking hikes, the Cardiff Bay and Barrage circular hike, 5 miles today, bringing my ongoing total up to 15 miles so far. Unfortunately, Derek's weathermen colleagues got the forecast for today completely wrong - it peed down the entire time we were out walking and we have ended exceedingly damp and steaming!? Still, we'd said we do the walk today, we knew which restaurant we wanted to finish up in for tea so off we set trying to ignore the rain and the wind.
The actual start point for the Barrage walk is in Penarth but we decided to ignore that bit and started in the Bay and by point No.9 on the route - Roald Dahl Plass. For those not from Cardiff this is the central point of the Bay with the Millennium Centre and the Senedd (Welsh Government building) and close to the restaurant area. As it was a circular walk it was easy to start and end here. Thankfully, I was able to kill two birds today as I am also currently hunting down Cardiff snow dogs and there were a LOT along this route.
From the central point in the Bay, we walked past all the restaurants, past Ianto's shrine (only really makes sense if you are in to Torchwood - filmed in Cardiff just like Dr Who is)
and on past St Davids Hotel, and Techniquest to the start of an area we've never been to before, the Cardiff Wetland Area Reserve.
It was very pretty, though the weather was awful by now, but there were birds about, it felt very peaceful and it did have lovely views across the Bay - well I'm sure they would be lovely on any other day when it wasn't chucking it down but at we tried to use our imaginations.
We carried on, heading towards Penarth, walking past the ice rink, the swimming pool and Cardiff Whitewater Rafting centre. The weather was becoming bloody horrible by now.
Heading from the Wetlands Centre over to Penarth we came across this sculpture, it must have been fairly recent as Derek didn't mention it in his Weatherman Walking route -but then again, there was a lot of new building works we passed which have sprung up since he did his original walk. Anyway, I've just looked this sculpture up online and it's called A Personal View. I just liked it because I could take selfies of me and me!
Still, if we wanted to get back to Cardiff Bay train station there was only one way now. Across the Barrage. Completely open to the elements - the wind, the peeing down rain and the cold. Thankfully it either wasn't as bad when we walked the barrage, or, we were so numb and damp that we no longer felt the cold.
Because of the weather, it almost felt fitting when half way across we came across an exhibit about Captain Scott - there because apparently they set off for the South Pole from Cardiff. Though by this point the wind had died down, it had stopped raining and we were nearly at the end of the walk in any case. We got back to the main part of Cardiff Bay, caught the train back to Queen Street and we could go for a meal in Stewart's favourite chain restaurant Café Rouge feeling that we had earned the right to stuff our faces. It would have been nice to do this walk in decent weather och well, cest la vie.
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