I remember the days when the terminus of the No.24 used to be near where I lived. Not today though. It departs from the Cardiff Bus Interchange. I still wonder what would happen if I asked a stranger in the street if they could point me in the direction of the Cardiff Bus Interchange. Some know-it-all may say, ‘Just keep walking down there, past the hyb’ (Cardiff’s new word for a library).
The No.24 now does an anti-clockwise loop around Whitchurch, Llandaff North and Llandaff. We decided a visit to Llandaff Cathedral was in order, somewhere my wife tells me she’s never been inside, mainly because she’d always have the dog in tow when visiting Llandaff. First though it was a walk around the Green, a look at the statue of former Archdeacon of Llandaff, James Rice Buckley looking happy with himself in his bowler hat, and then onto the rather unusual war memorial designed by W. Goscombe John.
My book for today was one of the series of Real Cardiff books by local author Peter Finch. I do like these books which for me cram in prose, historical information and humour all the way through. When he penned this first of the series back in 2002 he didn’t appear enthralled with the inside of the cathedral layout. I think things have improved somewhat over the intervening years.
Lunch was taken in Jaspers Tea Rooms, popular even in winter. I had the cawl, Welsh for stew but it sounds much better and tastes better too come to that. There was just time for a mooch along the high street and the post-Christmas sales – half price Christmas cards etc, before catching the No.24 back to town.
The No.23 goes in the opposite direction to the No.21 around Whitchurch and Rhiwbina. The used to be a No.22 route but it was scrapped after a bus absconded one day and was last seen heading over the Severn Bridge. Whether the passengers ever managed to get off before Devizes is not known but Mr Appleby missed his hospital appointment and is now Secretary of the Wiltshire Ramblers. No, ignore all that, just my imagination running wild.
No 23 Cardiff Bus
Another wet day. It’s been raining for a month in South Wales and I’m pleased to report our reservoirs are now almost full after the summer drought. It can stop raining now! I alighted in Rhiwbina intending to walk to a nearby pub but spotted a load of beer barrels on the pavement opposite and thought I would investigate more. It was the Rhiwbina Tap and looked inviting so I went in. I think they’ve lost their sign.
This is one of the new style bars serving craft beers, distinguishable from the traditional beers by being £2 more expensive, 10oC colder and needing to be drunk whilst sat on hard chairs. I’m going to have to get used to it and enter the modern age or become a cynic. Actually the beer was good and so was the atmosphere and the service so no complaints there. I had a pint of Panettone beer from the Arbor Bristol brewery.
My book for the trip was ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ by Amor Towels. What a great read. It’s tells the story of a Count under house arrest in a hotel in Moscow after the Russian Revolution. I chuckled when reading the following whist supping my beer. When the Count and his young companion, Nina, stumble upon a room containing banqueting utensils:
Nina asks “What’s that?”
“An asparagus server” he explained.
“Does a banquette really need an asparagus server?”
“Does an orchestra really need a bassoon?”
I came out and went for a very brisk walk around Rhiwbina Park, arriving back at the bus stop just in the nick of time to catch the next No.23 into town which was by now getting busy with people heading to Winter Wonderland.
If you had to choose just one artist to listen to each day who would you choose for the letter A? Here are mine this past week:
My Musical Week: A
Joan Armatrading: I do like female singer-songwriters. The advantages of this challenge immediately showed through. There is a lot of her catalogue I’ve never listened to and it’s good. The only artist in this first week I have seen live and we were both far from home – Northrop Auditorium in Minneapolis. I always thought she came from Birmingham but she was born in Saint Kitts and Nevis. An intensely private person with a BA in history.
Aswad: I also like a bit of reggae sometimes, but maybe a whole day of it is a bit much. I recall someone having an Aswad album in college and then forgot about them, only rediscovering them in later life. A London based group where their reggae has other influences in it such as R&B.
‘Cannonball’ Adderley: An American jazz saxophonist who died too young at 46. He covered a wide range of jazz genres some of which I like a lot more than others.
America: When people ask me what type of music I like then I invariably answer folk-rock. America was always one of my favorites, though I never caught them live. Maybe they didn’t leave America that often. I wonder if they have found a name for that horse yet?
Adwaith: By this stage in the week word was getting out about this challenge and the family were starting to chip in with suggestions. Adwaith are a Welsh indie-rock band from Carmarthen meaning ‘reaction’ in English. Good lively stuff.
Brian Auger: Jazz and rock pianist who used to play with Rod Stewart and Julie Driscoll (Wheels on Fire) and jammed with Clapton and Hendrix in his time. ‘Live at Bogies’ was my most played album this year according to Spotify. I haven’t seen him live but he has seen me perform. His uncle was Capt George Auger – The World’s Tallest Man, a subject of one of my talks. I first gave the talk during Covid by Zoom and Brian joined from his home in California. He’d only vaguely heard about George Auger previously and the family connection London born but still going strong in California at the age of 82. A charming man.
AnnenMayKantereit: Another good suggestion from the family. A German band singing in both German and English. My Spotify predicted age which this year was 82 will be falling like a stone at this rate.
And now for 7 beginning with B. Must get some classical music in here too.
I’ve just been reading about a popular computer game called ‘Croydon: London Bus Simulator’. Whoever would have thought that would sell. It may be a wet miserable day but I decided to go for the real thing rather ran use a simulator. Today it was the No.21 to Rhiwbina and Whitchurch and a ride on an electric Mercedes-Benz Citaro O530. It’s getting a bit serious now I am beginning to spot the difference between the types of buses.
I went to see my great-grandparents. They are buried in Pant Mawr Cemetery. It’s an appropriate time of year to visit as he was called Evan Christmas Thomas. I never knew them but I spent quite a few years researching them and eventually tracked him down to a small village in West Wales. When the woollen industry collapsed he closed his woollen mill and came to Cardiff as a paint salesman. In 1907 he was unlucky enough to be involved in what must have been one of the first ever hit-and-run cycling accidents on the road between Merthyr and Brecon in 1907. The newspaper reports make fascinating reading. I wrote up the highlights in It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Charismas.
I did find my great grandparents though they have fallen over since my last visit. Their red granite headstone used to be tied to a stake as it had evidently become unstable. The people from Bereavement Services regularly go around doing stability tests. I’ve seen them do it and they give the headstone a real shove. At some stage it must have been decided to lay this one flat rather than just secure it to a stake.
After paying my respects I had a wander around. I’d never seen the interesting large Chinese section in the cemetery. Back on the bus again and out of the rain I headed for Whitchurch and got off in the heart of the village. I sought refuge in The Plough, a former Brains pub now owned by Marsdon’s but still selling Brains beers. I had a pint of Santa’s Ale and jolly nice it was too.
My book for the day was ‘Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills’ by Neil Ansell. It’s a lovely read about a man who came to Wales and lived in a cottage for five years on his own with no utilities. It’s a gentle read, no bravado or arrogance or looking for sympathy. He has a wonderful in-depth knowledge of nature.
I noted in the bus station that some timetables and routes are changing in January including the No.7 route. Now what should I do? Ignore it, re-do it at the end or re-do it in January? A real dilemma. I’ve got Christmas to think about it and seek counselling.
I had to change my plan to catch the No.18 yesterday as Ely Bridge was closed after a crash. Today things were back to normal and the sun was shining. Ideal. People wearing their Christmas sweaters were out in force in town.
My book for the day was ‘Murder Under the Mistletoe’ by Reverend Richard Coles. It’s a short amusing novel but I can’t help thinking I’ve missed something. I’m two thirds of the way through and everyone is still alive and kicking.
Lunch at Lew’s Coffee Shop in Ely Hyb with Richard Coles.
The No.18 goes around Ely and Caerau in the opposite direction to the No.17, but things look quite different going in reverse. I went to Ely Hyb for some lunch at Lew’s Coffee Shop. My barbecue chicken baguette was tasty though I don’t think it had ever encountered a barbecue.
The colours in Trelau Park were excellent today. It reminded me of crisp bright days in USA. It’s a sizable park to walk round but I didn’t spot any sign of the old Roman Fort that used to be here nor the old Ely Racecourse where they used to hold the Welsh Grand National. Now here’s a good question for a quiz. Which famous jockey’s father won the last ever race here? It was Keith Piggott on Grasshopper in 1939.
The Cardiff Bus No’s 17 and 18 head out west from the city centre to Ely and Caerau, using the same route until they cross Ely Bridge then the 17 goes clockwise and the 18 anti-clockwise. I looked at the route map and decided I’d visit the ruins of St Mary’s Church and Caerau Hill Fort, somewhere I haven’t been for quite some time.
No 17 Cardiff Bus to Ely
The smooth No 17 electric bus whirred to a halt in traffic on Cowbridge Road for some unknown reason, but armed with a book I didn’t have a care in the world. I noticed how my mental attitude to such as stoppage was completely different than if it were to have happened on my normal route into town to a meeting or alike. After 15 minutes we were moving again though on these quiet electric buses I hadn’t even noticed.
On my walk up the hill I spotted newish Caer Heritage Hidden Hill Fort Centre and being both curious and cheeky I popped my head in. It a was a great find from a number of angles. They had some finds on display uncovered from recent excavations both at the hill fort and Trelai Park. Also, the people there were able to tell me all about the excavation activities and the involvement of the local community.
Some of the finds from Caerau Hill Fort and Trelai Park
I climbed the hill and had the area to myself. I can see why it’s called the hidden hill fort as there is nothing there to see – it’s in the imagination. I thought the orange markers in the adjoining field marked some recent excavations but they were just feeding buckets for the cows. Easy mistake. There’s not much left of St Mary’s Church and unfortunately it is very prone to vandalism being so isolated. Some recent damage to graves was sad to see.
St Mary Church, Caerau
I had got off the bus at a stop called the 4th Glamorgan Homeguard Club and thought it worth a closer look, if only for its unique name. It’s a friendly place, lots of snooker being played both on the table and the TV. I even had a chat with the ex-Wales pool champion. The Guinness was certainly decent. My book for the day was ‘Cracking the Elements’ by Rebecca Mileham. I describe it as a dipping book i.e. a good book for dipping in and out of and in this case reading about all the elements and the periodic table.
A decent Guinness and Cracking the Elements at the 4th Glamorgan Homeguard Club.
I jumped off my No.17 bus when it got back to Wood Street in town to take a photo, only to be thwarted by the fact it had already changed its headboard to the No.18. Lucky I don’t approach these hobbies too seriously.
This is a cruel trick to play on me Cardiff Bus! I thought this was a straightforward challenge I was undertaking but I’ve already been surprised by the existence of the Nos.1A, 2A and 4 buses and now we have the No.14 This is a rare bus indeed, just one per day that starts in Caerau and goes to the Heath Hospital. Not only that but it leaves at 7am! I’m not a morning person at the best of times. I used to wake up at 6.45am and have an hour drive into work but those days are long gone.
Cardiff Bus No14 route
Given the pain I was about to go through by rising early I wanted to minimize the chances of things going wrong. I’d spotted the No.14 on a bus tracker app a few weeks previously when I happened to wake up early so I knew it existed. The No.14 is meant to start from a stop called Amroth Road, close to the junction with the A48 but when I looked on Google Street View there was no sign of a bus stop on that side of the road. I decided to visit in advance thinking that Street View may be out of date. Unfortunately there is indeed no bus stop sign there. The No.17 was due which is also meant to stop there. It came around the corner, I stuck out my hand and the drive gave an apologetic shrug of his shoulders and drove past. I guess it used to be a bus stop but probably caused traffic congestion being so close to the junction. I walked down the road 150yds and found another bus stop. This was strangely advertising the No.15 even though there isn’t a Cardiff Bus No.15. Maybe there was once upon a time.
The bus stop sign may say No.15 but don’t believe it.
On the day of this adventure I was up at 6am and struggled through the pain barrier. It was still dark and a heavy frost lay on the ground. I arrived at the Bromley Road bus stop. I don’t know why but I was surprised how busy the area was; cars, vans, cyclists and dog walkers all out and about. And what should appear, dead on time, but the No.14. Needless to say I was the only one on it. I sat the in a chilly bus wondering if anyone else would get on between here and the Heath Hospital. Astonishingly a lot of people did. It’s a popular bus. By the time we got to the hospital at 7.45 it was full! I walked up to the main concourse and almost got flattened by the hundreds of people arriving. It must be shift change-over time. I asked at reception if they still had my tonsils I’d had extracted in the 1970s. They said probably not but instead gave me a leaflet on counseling.
I realised this was not the place to go for a quiet coffee. Instead I headed for the Park Side café which I had spotted from the bus as we approached the hospital. Breakfast was therefore a plum Danish and a cappuccino. It was lovely. I sat there and read my book, The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park by Japanese author Michiko Aoyama that has been described as a feel good book. My criticism would be it has been translated into American-English rather than British-English, but luckily I speak American. You may be wondering (probably not) how I chose this specific book in the library. Well, as I’m on the No.14 bus, I counted 14 books along from the left and picked it up. Surely that’s what most people would do?
A friend of mine will be ever so jealous of me catching the No.13 to Drope. He’s been on to me for years saying he is fascinated by the name Drope and one day wants to catch the No.13 there. Wiki tells me ‘Drope is a hamlet in the valley of the River Ely in Vale of Glamorgan, southeast Wales, just beyond the territorial border of western Cardiff’. I took a picture of the bus and sent it to him. There’s one big problem though. The bus doesn’t actually go to Drope. Many years ago I think the bus probably did go there but not anymore. In fact if you look at Google Street View you can see a bus stop in Drope and even an actual bus but the photos are dated 2012. Nowadays the closest you get is Mansell Avenue which leaves you a 15 walk to Drope. So why is the No.13 Cardiff Bus still advertising Drope on it’s headboard? Probably because it would be fairly expensive to change I guess. Being a bit nerdy I asked both an attendant in the bus station and the bus driver whether the bus went to Drope. They looked rather confused/embarrassed, I’m not sure which, but didn’t have an answer.
Cardiff Bus No.13 route
Before catching the bus I needed a book. I’d had a look around to see what was near the No.13 terminus and spotted the Western Cemetery. I visit Cathays Cemetery on a weekly basis but I think I have only ever been to Western Cemetery once or twice and that was quite a few years ago. I searched to see if there was anyone of note buried there and came across a reference to Mahmood Mattan, the last person to be hung in Cardiff in 1952. In 1998, 45 years after his death, his conviction was quashed. I spotted the was a book, The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed, a non-fiction novel that semi-fictionalises the true story of Mahmood Mattan.
No.13 Cardiff Bus to Drope and Western Cemetery
I looked in the very useful Cardiff Libraries on-line catalogue. It told me they had some eight copies and only two were currently out on loan and that the most convenient one for me to pick up a copy would be Capel i Bawb library at the Infirmary. What a lovely wee library this is, built in a renovated hospital chapel. I was there some ten minutes after it opened, armed with the Dewey classification. Could I find it? No. Luckily there was a librarian on duty who said it was best to ignore the Dewey classification and have look in the fiction section. I suppose that made sense in hindsight considering the book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021.
The No.13 took me out along Cowbridge Road, over the River Ely and then into Ely itself. The Halloween decorations had come down and the Christmas decorations starting to appear.
Western Cemetery is large and opened in 1936. There is a war graves section, a fenced off Jewish section, a Greek orthodox section and a couple of Muslim sections. I didn’t have a location for the Mattan grave but I did have a picture and guessed it was in the Muslim section. It took about 30 minutes to locate. On his headstone is inscribed Killed by Injustice. I took a few minutes to reflect on that.
Mahmoud Mattan grave at Western Cemetery, Cardiff
I walked out the other end of the cemetery and onto Cowbridge Road West, past the milestone and found the Café Eighty Nine in The Range. The Christmas shoppers were out in droves but I found a table, ordered a brie and cranberry panini and pot of tea and settled down to read. The Fortune Men is very well written, lovely prose, good social history of Cardiff but a harrowing story at the same time.
Milestone Cowbridge Road Cardiff and The Range Cafe
I was lucky. Somebody had already given me a heads up (more about that phrase later). Cardiff Bus operate forty two No.11 services each day and all but one of those go to Pengam Green. The one exception is the 15.40 from Hayes Bridge Road which goes not to Pengam Green but to Wentloog Business Park. This Bus-Book-Beverage adventure was therefore done over two days, the first to Wentloog Business Park and the second to Tesco in Pengam Green.There no end to the fun this challenge offers.
No 11 Cardiff Bus
First things first and time to find a book for the journey. The fact this one started next to the Central Library was ideal. I popped in and grabbed the first book I saw. The fact it is about sheep is purely coincidental. It is extracts from a diary about life on an organic farm in Gloucestershire. It’s a good and insightful read into the tough life of being a farmer and endeared more sympathy in me that the interviews I see on TV news with farmer union officials.
The Wisdom of Sheep by Rosamund Young
The No.11 took me through Adamsdown, Splott and Tremorfa, areas I am used to researching via my involvement with Roath Local History Society. It may not seem obvious these days but the old parish of Roath used to go all the way down to the sea and included these areas, hence my interest.
The bus got to Rover Way and swung eastwards past the Secret Station sculpture by Eilis O’ Connell, now just a shadow of its former self and looking rather forlorn. I wonder how many people accidentally find themselves trapped on the No.11 heading out towards Wentloog on a daily basis. We drop a few shift workers off to work and pick up quite a few more on the return journey.
Secret Station sculpture by Eilis O’ Connell in the days it was illuminated and emitted steam
The next day I caught another No.11, this time to Pengam Green and had my lunch in Tesco. I was taken aback – even Tesco’s café have digital order boards these days. I just about coped. I had the Mac & Cheese or as we used to call it when I was growing up, macaroni cheese. It barely covered the bottom of the shallow dish and I was questioning the value for money but then ten minutes after finishing it I felt stuffed. The dish looked like and indeed evidently had the properties of that yellow expanding foam you get at DIY stores.
Mac & Cheese Tesco Extra Pengam
To walk off lunch I went for a stroll around Tremorfa Park. It is built, like much of Tremorfa, on the site of an old airfield, Pengam Moor. And what an interesting history the airfield has. It was where the airship pioneer Ernest Willows first built his airships. It was the base for Wales’s only operational RAF Squadron, the 614 Squadron, albeit only for a short period of time. And it had commercial flights operating here both before and after WWII, before Cardiff Airport relocated out to Rhoose.
614 Squdron monument Tremorfa Park and map dating from ~1945 with some early Tremorfa streets laid down.
Right, returning to that phrase ‘heads up’. I first came across it some twenty or thirty years ago which working with people who used to adopt this emerging American-like lingo, mainly to hide the fact that they didn’t have anything of substance to say. It was all ‘on the same page’, ‘thinking outside the box’, ‘touching base’, ‘leverage’ and ‘low hanging fruit’. ‘Heads up’ in hindsight seems obvious now; someone says something and it is so important that you need to raise your head to listen to them. For some reason however I had only ever heard the phrase ‘they’ve got their head up their arse’, so when people told me they were giving me a ‘heads up’ I naturally assumed it was a shortened version of that phrase. Think about that next time someone says ‘heads up‘ to you. Picture it and try not to laugh.
Millennium Stadium, Dr Who tardis and Merchant Navy Memorial art at Tremorfa Park
The Cardiff Bus No.9 goes from Heath Hospital all the way down to Sports Village via the city centre. I had a cunning plan. I was going to catch it outside Cathays Library. Every Tuesday morning a group of us go for a walk around Cathays Cemetery and take it in turns to talk about either some of the nature or some of the ‘residents’. I find it fascinating to learn about the lives of the people buried there. Today we had a Victorian coal exporter and a newly installed war graves headstone to discuss.
After that I popped into the library to do some research of my own into the portrait artist Margaret Lindsay Williams. She really was very skilful and painted many Royal family portraits as well as an American President. A lot of online material states she was born in Barry. She certainly did live there from a young age but I wanted to check and ordered her birth certificate. It turns out she was a local girl born in Gordon Road, near the Mansion House. One of her paintings that’s getting press attention at present is of a ward at Cardiff Royal Infirmary.
Cardiff Royal Infirmary painting by Margaret Lindsay Williams
So after Cathays Cemetery and a half hour research in Cathays Library it was time to embark on my next Bus-Book-Beverage adventure. The No.9 route operates five buses each hour so there’s never long to wait for the next bus. I must say there’s something rather unnerving about a bus that starts at the hospital and then heads to the cemetery. Sometimes they run double-deckers on this route and it’s fun to sit upstairs and look at streets like Crwys Road and City Road from angles you don’t normally see them. Not today though. Our single decker took me into town then a 5-10 minute wait in Westgate Street while it adjusted to its timetable times and then we set off again through Grangetown. The wide avenue of Clive Street looked great today with its Victorian housing. It was then into the much more modern mix of retail and low-rise flats before we arrive at Sports Village and the swimming pool.
No.9 Cardiff Bus Sports Village
I had my mind and stomach set on one thing today, an almond chocolate croissant from Tŷ Melin Bakery. They are enormous and probably not intended to be eaten by a single person, at least not in a single-sitting. I walk down to the Marina and immediately spot the flaw in my plan. It’s raining heavily and they have no indoor seating and their outdoor tables have no cover. But when a man has his heart set on something it’s hard to change his mind and I resist the temptation to go to the café/bar next door which does have indoor seating.
Armed with my almond chocolate croissant and cappuccino I exit the bakery in search of some shelter. No sooner do I get out than I find a dropped purse. What is it about this challenge that leads me to keep finding things? So far I have found a mobile phone in a Cardiff Bay pub, a passport in the Bus Station and now a purse. I could have a whole new identity by now. I feel an idea for a novel coming on. I hand the purse into the bakery and then find the only sheltered place in sight, a miserable entrance to an underground car park. I say miserable but for some reason it has a Bayscape sculpted stone etched with a flying bird. What miserable weather but the croissant and coffee tasted delicious! They were gone before I remembered to take a photo.
Determined to get at least a bit of exercise on this adventure I put up the umbrella and headed over the pedestrian bridge. There’s some interesting artwork over here. In the middle of the roundabout near Tesco is a representation of the transmitter Marconi used for his first radio transmission from nearby Lavernock Point to Flat Holm island in 1897. Nearby is the sculpture Slate Sails by Howard Bowcott and one I rather like though it looked bleak today.
In the end I admit the weather defeated me and I head back to the bus stop. It’s over an hour journey back so I settle down with my book, another good find in a book exchange. It’s Ticket to Ride by Tom Chesshyre, a man who goes on a series of train journeys around the world. First he tries to get an insight into people’s fascination with trains by standing on the platform in Crew and talking to the train enthusiasts. It’s very amusing and I can see the irony in that, being sat on a bus for no particular reason. In the second chapter he goes to Kosovo with Ffestiniog Travel Co. Another coincidence occurs. He tells the reader how Ffestiniog Travel Co originates in Porthmadoc, home of the Ffestiniog Railway and then goes on to explain a bit about the history of that railway, how it started as a slate transport railway from the quarries at Blaenau Festiniog to the port of Porthmadoc. The coincidence is that I’m in the middle of preparing a talk about how that railway put my g-g-g-grandfather out of business as he used to transport the slate down the river by boat before the railway was constructed.
Ticket to Ride Tom Chesshyre
The bus stops near Ikea and two ladies struggle on, one armed with a large peddle bin and one with an artificial Christmas tree. Two stops later we hit trouble. The doors won’t close. The driver tries everything ranging from turning everything off and on again to a well timed shoulder barge. They reluctantly shut. He tests them again but no luck. I’m not worried though. We have everything we need on board; a peddle bin for, how can I put this delicately… waste, and if we are here for an extended period, a Christmas tree. The driver calls HQ. Already there are shouts from the back of the bus “Do we need to get off Drive?”
The abandon bus command is given just as the next No.9 pulls in and the next stage of the adventure begins. I jump off the bus in town to take a picture of our new bus but it is such a grey and dismal afternoon it hardly seems worth it. It’s only 2pm but cars already have their headlights on. I regularly wipe the window free of condensation with my forearm in order to get a view. We get to the hospital and my plan is to stay onboard back down to Crwys Road to complete the route.
Cardiff Bus No.9 – a miserable day on St Mary Street
As a consequence of our broken down bus and wet weather means this bus quickly gets full. The nurses heading home at the end of their shift occupy the back of the bus whilst the out-patients with their crutches, bandages and onward referrals are at the front of the bus. I move forward for fear of getting trapped at the back. Top marks to the driver for his communication skills. “Please move to the back of the bus unless you are getting off at the next couple of stops”, he shouts. Vehicles are breaking down all over the place. We squeeze past a car on the railway bridge on Crwys Road refusing to start. It’s time to get out and head home and dry out.
Cardiff Capers 