Cardiff Blues

... well, not particularly bluesy I guess, just used that title because it was a pun on the rugby team. But yeah, I went with my parents to Cardiff today, to do some shopping and have a look round Cardiff Castle. We'd never been to Cardiff Castle before, as it happens - just seemed to be something we never did on trips to Cardiff. The main reason we went there now is because a few months we went to Castell Coch, were impressed by it, and found out that the same "team" were behind Cardiff Castle - the various Lords Bute and the architect William Burgess, late 19th/early 20th Century dudes who wanted to build new fancy castles on the ruins of old ones. I guess they aren't really authentic castles in that sense, but hey, makes a chance from the usual story you get at castles. Castles are fun, but too many similar ones is a bit wearing (all Welsh castles pretty much seem to follow the formula "built by Edward I, trashed by Oliver Cromwell"), so the variety is nice.

Of course, taking priority over any castle features were two things: cricket inside the castle (yep. Like sometimes you have archery displays or falconry or something. This was a Kwik Cricket display. Funny old world) and - wooo - ducklings. There was a little moat around the motte part of the castle (the mound where the keep is) and the moat was home to various waterfowl. Initially though, the ducklings and their mother were hanging around outside the moat. Then the mother scrambled up a little embankment, but the slope was too high for the ducklings to follow her.

So there was this weird sight of a bunch of ducklings scrabbling and trying to jump up this slope, funny and sad at the same time. The mother was oddly passive about this, sitting at the top of the little embankment wondering what the problem was. Eventually a member of staff went over to try and pick the ducklings up, which worried me a bit - too much handling by humans can cause the mother to abandon the ducklings. Of course, once he tried to pick one duckling up, the others all scattered, cheeping frantically and running, looking for a less steep way into the moat. They made it in the end, thankfully.

Other than that, the castle was pretty... well, castly. Very nice, but... castly. Battlements and keeps and bits inside the walls and the inevitable stately home bit where Team Bute lived, although that was heavily adapted from a Georgian stately home from before they began their "renovations". There was some graffiti in the garderobe from the 19th century, if you're interested (as well as some from the 21st century. Well, at least there was precedent... :p).

Meanwhile in Cardiff city centre we did some shopping. Main thing for me was a new pair of earphones: the wire was going on two of my current pairs, so that one of the ears kept cutting out, while my evergreen Original Gameboy earphones (yep, the ones with the blue and red corrugated bits where the wire goes into the bud) are lost somewhere (shame. Much like the Gameboy itself, they appear to be indestructible). But these new earphones seem pretty good, although as always it was a bugger getting those little foam covers onto the earbud.

Anyway, I have a covering e-mail for a job application to finish off, so I'd better go now. See you next time or something.