This bus holds a World Record! The No.30 is jointly run by Newport and Cardiff Bus. The buses alternate throughout the day and I had to be careful to make sure I always caught a Cardiff Bus. It wasn’t that challenging – one is bright orange and the other green, plus the timetable indicates who the operator is. The No.30 is the longest period of a jointly operated municipal bus service in the world and started operating 80 years ago.
I had a dash to a local bus stop and arrived just as the No.30 was pulling up. The bus goes along the A48 all the way to Newport. It was quite a shock to the system to be travelling at speed on a Cardiff bus in the non-built-up stretches. I got off in Tredegar Park. Now I must admit that I had been thinking I was going to Tredegar House but had got the two nearby locations mixed up. Not to worry, Tredegar Park is another nice location.
It has had a lot of money spent on it in recent years and is looking very smart I must say with good new tarmac paths. I had a brisk walk around the circumference and then had a coffee at Able Coffee. Two dog walkers arrived with their poodle in prams. I was a bit confused why three drinks were delivered at their table until I realised one was for a poodle. I think it may have preferred a scone and jam.
My book for the day was Dry by Augusten Burroughs, a memoir of a New York advertising agent as he battles with alcoholism. Amusing, yes, but not hilarious as described on the cover but then again humour doesn’t always travel well. At one stage he is sent to a drying-out clinic in Minnesota and is describing arriving at the airport not having received any details of who was going to meet him there. It very much reminded me of my experience in the early 1980s when I went to live in Minneapolis for a year. That was in the days before e-mail, phone or fax. There was one telex machine on Swansea University campus and a telex would take about a week to be delivered across campus. I’d received the job offer and accepted but never got the telex saying I was going to be met at the airport. The only advice I had ever got from friends was don’t make eye contact with anyone coming out of Arrivals at the airport otherwise they will take you home and mutilate you. I exited the airport and jumped into the nearest cab, which happened to be one of those stretch limo ones, and requested a cheap hotel near the University of Minnesota campus. It was only the next day was I told that someone had been at the airport to meet me.
The timing worked out well and it was to on time to catch the next Cardiff Bus No.30 into Newport, have a brief mooch around town and then hop back on the same bus which took me back to Cardiff, then a short wait again to hop back on to get the bus back to where I started the day which was all orange and no green!
Cardiff Capers 