A Castle and some Rugby

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Last weekend Craig, Aldo and I trained it up to Cardiff and met Cathy who flew in from Dublin.

Saturday morning was spent visiting Cardiff Castle. I'm a sucker for a castle. In Australia buildings from the 70s get added to the historic building register so anything that predates laminex and brown bricks is cool in my books. There was a moat; need I say more? For some reason there often seems to be peacocks in the grounds of British historic buildings and that day we were treated to a full feather lifting, booty shaking mating display from one of the males.

We cruised about town and walked around the recently developed bayside area. I was impressed with the Milennium Centre, a performing arts complex at Cardiff Bay - very interesting architecture. After an coffee break we decided we wanted to watch the rugby with the Cardiffians (Google tells me this is the right word) so headed towards town to find a pub.

The rugby was part of the Six Nations tournament and was the Wales v England match being played at Twickenham. I have learned that I am a bad, bad Australian for not understanding rugby. I feel I am well versed in most things sporting however growing up in Victoria makes it impossible to learn about any other code than Aussie Rules. I know more about Formula 1 and the Premier League than I do about Australian Rugby Union. On arrival in the UK I realised that I had missed a whole element of Australian culture and I get many odd responses from British and Australian people when I explain I just don't watch it at home. Recently baptized into the rugby community, we four Victorians chose to join the Welsh and watch the match.

At 10:30am the streets were full of people dressed up for partying on their way to the the pubs about town to watch the match on the TV. The Walkabout had a thirty metre line at 11am. Yes, the WALKABOUT. A LINE. The pubs were packed with people full of patriotic vigour. We watched the Welsh be soundly beaten by the English but the people we were watching with took it in good spirit and we had big chats with a few of the guys there once we vowed that we weren't supporting the English.

Unfortunately once the match was over we bore witness to the loutish behaviour I had heard of in towns outside London through the media but had never actually witnessed. At 5pm the streets were full of kebab eating, vomit sharing, fight starting, bag of rubbish throwing rugby fans. It's a shame that this is the strongest image I have of Cardiff because everyone there was really friendly and I'm sure this is an exception to normal Saturday afternoons there. I shall have to go back on a more sedate weekend!

Saturday night was spent with the gang at a pub - it's always a mad night when Cath's around but I'll just leave it at that. Cath and Craig had to leave early on Sunday so Aldo and I cruised around for the day, enjoying being outside of London for a bit.

Next trip is to Morocco. I am so Big Kev excited!

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