UK03 – Saturday, 15 Feb 03

We usually tried to pick up the BBC or ITV morning news when we got up. The big items on that day were the large peace protests/rallies in the UK, etc.

One thing I found interesting was the involvement of the press in all this, up to and including the Sun printing off placards for protesters to carry. Interesting. I mean, I’m used to that for sports events, but not for political rallies.

Part of our new regimen was that, rather than getting up and eating around 8, we aimed to eat breakfast around 9. And we further decided we would head out that day someplace later in the morning, rather than right after brekky.

That meant time for various chit-chatting and lounging about in the third floor sitting room. We also got a chance to play a round of Outrage!, the steal-the-crown-jewels game we picked up at the Tower of London. Fun, yeah, but nothing that’s going to replace D&D any time soon. Or Monopoly, for that matter.

Lori was not feeling well that morning — indeed, was downright sick. The curse, I suppose, of the Devil’s Seat. So the Testerfolk and we went down to Cardiff, home of a fine craft shop that we recalled. The prospect of craft shops had brought out Doyce’s Goblet Envy, so that’s what we were in hunt of.

It was an easy drive, especially, ahem, in the daylight, down to Cardiff Bay, once called Tiger Bay when it was a hive of scum and villainy, back in the day. Now it’s the home of various restaurants, shops, the under-construction Millennium Centre. (Attempts to get a Millennium Centre built for the, well, Millennium, foundered on Creative Differences. That the current building looks like it will be horrifically ugly when complete only adds to the irony here.)

We got down there, and, in keeping with our new resolve, we went first for a bite to eat, which, since Jackie had a yen for scones, took longer than one might imagine. (I was dismayed by the paucity of places we went to that had scones, or that had garlic (fried) mushrooms, for that matter.)

After that, we did a remarkably small amount of hunting before we found “Craft in the Bay,” the HQ of the Makers Guild of Cardiff.

Hrm.

As before (when they were in temporary quarters in a nearby building), there was a lot of pretty stuff there. It’s where, for example, we picked up the blue goblet and plate that we have on our organ.

But the collection seemed smaller this time. Or maybe just less varied. Gorgeous stuff, highly priced, nothing to buy.

Hrm.

Hey, says Dave. Maybe we can find that craft shop up near Brecon. Straight up the A470. I think I can find it, I do.

So off we head, north, taking some unplanned detours through residential neighborhoods, and then on to A470 and past Merthyr Tydfil and Nant Ddu and the beauty of the Brecon Beacons and up to Brecon and …

And, well, I couldn’t find it.

So we walked around Brecon a little bit, then headed back down.

(For the record, as we were packing up on the last day, I found the guide to craft shops in South Wales that we’d used the last stay, and discovered where that place was. Too late, of course, dagnabbit.)

An interesting cultural aside: The Brits are big on using air dryers in the restrooms, or, lacking that, the “infinite cloth towel loops.” Not many places using paper towels. Probably, I suspect, because of the litter aspects, especially given the number of public WCs.

We didn’t run into many pay WCs, though there was at least one in London that the ladies nattered about, and another in Caerphilly. I don’t know if the plumbing was much different on the women’s side of things, but at least half of the men’s urinals were actually the “urinal wall” style, which has gone seriously out of fashion in the states (though it’s undoubtedly cheaper and less vandalism-prone).

End of aside.

One thing that had been missing so far in the vacation was doing some pub crawling. Part of that had been the feeling that we all had to Stick Together. Part of it was that smoky pubs were right out for some people (and clothes that had been in same were also right out). And in Wales, we were off in the countryside, with little around.

Well, there was one pub …

We did get into The Bear that night. Lori was not with us, still being ill. We found a good large table in the back of the non-smoking section (which was, remarkably, pretty unsmoky). They had a good pub menu. Jackie had a chicken breast baguette and chips; Doyce had Thai chicken; DaveG had the breaded plaice with a side salad; I had the steak fillet au poivre with sautéed garlic mushrooms; Margie had the Thai prawncakes and red curry. I know this, because in pubs you order at the bar, and I became our order-taker via my Palm …

Aside: salt grinders were popular in places we ate in the UK, I know not why. And, I am told (though I’m not sure I believe it), where pepper and salt were in shakers, which one was which (based on the number of holes) was the reverse of what it is in the states. End of aside.

The Bear also had some good deserts. In particular, they had a faboo ginger snaps/ginger ice cream concoction. Oh, bliss.

On the way back from the Bear, Doyce and I were dropped off at the Blue Bell for a couple of pints. Which we drank, watching some local kids playing snooker, and chatting about not much of anything. It was the only pubbing we did during the trip.