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Theresa and Xenia’s Excellent Wales Adventure

March 5th, 2009 at 07:23am theresa

Back in January, I was hunting around for a 5k race to run this spring, and there were none to be found in my neck of Scotland. But I really, really wanted to find a race to run in, so I started looking farther afield, and stumbled across the St. David’s Day 5k and 10k races in Cardiff, Wales. Hmmmm…Wales…I’d never been to Wales.  A quick email to Xenia and she was all for the idea of a weekend in Cardiff, including the race.  And so Theresa and Xenia’s Excellent Wales Adventure was on the calendar!

Friday, I caught the 2pm train down to London, and after a short ride on the Underground from Kings Cross to Paddington station and then a bit longer of a wait, I was on the train to Cardiff!

Once in Cardiff, I gave Xenia a call to let her know I’d arrived.  It was about 10:30pm.  It’s a LONG train ride from Edinburgh to Cardiff, but I blatantly ignored the opportunity to do work and instead spent the time reading Kushiel’s Dart, which is a LONG book. (I’d been working on it for a while, and finally finished it on the train ride back. A good, but EPIC story.)  Xenia had a much shorter train ride, and had arrived earlier in the evening.

I initially started to walk to the B&B where we were staying (Beaufort Guesthouse, I would recommend it), but shortly realized that this was a stupid thing to do at this time of night in a strange city and caught a cab.  And so, I arrived in Cardiff at the B&B after an uneventful day of traveling and a productive day of reading.  Xenia didn’t want to come down to open the door for me — something about already being in her pajamas — but luckily, someone did come when I rang the front bell.

Saturday morning, after a yummy breakfast in a fancy, fancy dining room, Xenia and I were off to collect our rental car.   The plan was that Xenia would drive and I would navigate.  Unfortunately, navigation relies on other things than being able to read a map, namely adequate signage and maps that do not look like this.   It also helps if all the roads are not mixtures of the letters A and B and numbers.  In the end, it took us about an hour, and I swear we went around the same round-a-bout three times, but we did eventually make it out of Cardiff and on to our first destination: Caerleon!

Caerleon was the site of a Roman Legionary Fortress.  It is also believed by some to be the location of King Arthur’s Camelot.  Sadly, there were no legionares or knights left roaming around, only the remains of a Roman bath, soldier barracks, and a Roman amphitheatre.  Admittedly, these were pretty cool. If ever given the chance, I do recommend seeing historical Roman sites with Xenia.  Being an archeologist of Roman stuff, it’s like having your own personal tour guide!

After exploring the amphitheatre (to the soundtrack of some seriously disturbed cows from the farm right next door) it was off to our next sight: Raglan Castle!

Raglan Castle was just amazing!  It’s in ruins, but there is enough there to get a feel for what it must have been like once upon a time.  The atmosphere sparked a sense of romance and adventure, and Xenia and I spent maybe a couple hours exploring.

After Raglan Castle, our plan was to find something to eat in Monmouth (which I still can’t say properly, for some reason).  And while there were plenty of places to eat in Monmouth, there was a dearth of places to park, so we decided to continue on to Tintern Abbey, and munch on our provisions once there.  (I always travel with food.)

Like Raglan, Tintern Abbey is in ruins now, but still an amazing sight.  Whereas Raglan Castle sparked feelings of romance and adventure, Tintern Abbey evoked feelings of tranquility and reverence.  I could have just sat and soaked up the quiet there for hours I think.  What it must have been like way back when!

By now it was about 3:30 in the afternoon, and we had seen our fill.  Xenia and I were both ready to head back to Cardiff.  It was an uneventful drive back with no episodes of misdirection (yay!).  We dropped off the car, then droped off our stuff, and went in search of an early dinner.  This involved passing by Cardiff Castle,  which was protected by many fierce beasts,  as well as a few not so fierce beasts.    Walking back after dinner, Xenia was tempted to hurdle the baracades and make a dash for the still open doors to the castle, but we worried about the time it would take to transfer the bail money to pounds sterling.

Sunday was race day!  With the 5k race not starting until 10:30, it was a leisurely morning.  It turned out to be an almost perfect day for a race, with temperatures around 50 F.  The race was held in Bute Park, which is basically the grounds of Cardiff Castle.

I ran the race in 37:12 minutes, according to my watch, which I was quite pleased with.  (You can read Xenia’s race report here.  I still need to write mine.)  After the 5k race,
I hurried back to the B&B for a quick shower. (I asked for a late checkout, because an 8+ hour train ride back to Edinburgh without a shower, eeeew. No time to fix my hair though, so had weird curls going on for the rest of the day.)  Xenia stayed so that she could run the 10k race as well.  Go Xenia!

After a quick trip back to the B&B to get our stuff, it was time to head in the general direction of the train station, via Bute Park, and a quick stop for lunch.  Unfortunately, our walk to the train station was a bit too leisurely, and we ended up having to sprint at the end to catch our train!  (Not fair, we’d already done our running that day!)

There was one worrying train delay on the way from Cardiff to London, but thankfully I’d left enough leeway in the schedule that I was still able to make my London train back to Edinburgh.  Xenia had switched trains at Didcot Parkway, and was home before dinner.  For me, it was a late night, and I wasn’t pleased by the delay when a couple of taxi drivers started arguing and nearly came to fisticuffs. (Ok, maybe a slight exaggeration, but I’ve always wanted to use that word.) Eventually, around midnight, I finally got home.

And that’s the end of our Wales adventure. It was a terrific weekend and great to see Xenia again!!

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