Paris Journal: Side trip to Wales

Welcome to Caerdydd (Welsh for Cardiff)

By Moristotle

On Saturday, June 17, the Paris metro stations were relatively deserted for our 6 a.m. departure from Mark’s apartment. We were off to take a train from Gare Du Nord to the port city of Calais, to be met there by our friend Penelope Griffiths, who had driven over from Cardiff, Wales to meet us and take us back on a ferry across the English Channel so we could see the White Cliffs of Dover.
    Our TGV train for the Calais-Frethun station was due to leave at 7:46 a.m. (Train à Grande Vitesse is France’s intercity high-speed rail service.) Having skipped breakfast in the apartment, we purchased coffee and pastries from a vendor, and managed to find one seat in the concourse.
    An extremely friendly young man offered us the seat of his companion, a younger black man, who quickly jumped up. This deference, and the emphatic cordiality, raised both of our suspicions (as we confirmed later) that the cordiality was feigned, part of a con. Wrong or right about that, I sat down next to him, but held back from fully engaging him in small talk. He asked where we were going, etc., and when I told him Calais, he said he was going there also (“a Londre, en Angleterre”).
    Though the young man was, on the face of it, a passionately open human being, whose rough dress and unpolished demeanor made me think – again, rightly or wrongly – of Vincent Van Gogh, we remained wary, and we soon got up from our two seats to walk around the station, for some exercise. It was barely 7 o’clock, still 40 minutes until departure.
    As we entered Platform #12 to board, the young man seemed deliberately to bump into my wife. At this point, his presumed traveling companion was not to be seen. Our unease was not diminished, but we soon forgot it.
    I messaged Penny:

We are aboard our TGV train. The platform (#12) was announced only about 15 minutes before scheduled departure time (07:46). But we were in our seats within I’d say three or four minutes of the announcement. Already charging our phones. No internet connection yet, however. Had excellent coffee, croissant, pain au chocolate, & pâtisserie apricot from a Paul kiosk. (We had our departing lunch at a Paul restaurant at the station in Lyon a week ago.) Train just pulling out of Gare du Nord.

    A porter at the Calais-Frethun train station helped connect us with Penny by delivering her message about where she was waiting for us. The weather was perfect.

On the road from Dover we passed through seven counties, which Penny observed are the equivalent of U.S. states, but much smaller. In one of them, in England, we stopped for lunch at a local mall, which area had apparently recently been discovered to sit atop an ancient Roman encampment.

    Upon reaching Wales at last, Penny showed us some of Cardiff, its capital, a large city with a huge castle at its center and many more in the vicinity. She showed us more, more quickly, than we could remember or note down for later research – at least, more than we could in our state of weariness from the long day. After the last of our first-day’s sight-seeing, we did a bit of grocery-shopping for our breakfasts, and then proceeded to Penny’s apartment.

   We were too tired to go out for dinner, so Penny suggested she collect some curry dishes from her favorite local Indian restaurant:

Although the UK is known for its fish and chips, the curry is much more widely eaten. The strong links with the Indian nation came from the colonial occupation of India by the British Empire, which was encouraged by Queen Victoria. There are many different curries from the different Indian regions. The south Kerala region tends to be more veggie or fish, but further north the more meaty gravy curries are the main cuisine. The take-out I suggested was from middle India and is known for its sour, hot gravy curries with coconut influences.
    There is also a strong Chinese influence, again due to the colony on Hong Kong, which was handed back to China only on 31st December 1999.

    Penny went out for the curry dishes, and we all ate ravenously, everyone complimenting the wonderful food.

The next morning, we went for a walk in Roath Park, driving the short distance to the park, which Penny told us

was built in the 1800s, for the gentry to take in air! It has an island at one end, where feeding swans, ducks, geese, and other fowl come every year to bring their next generations into the world. Boating is a big fun pastime here on the lake – in either rowing or paddle boats. The flora and fauna are maintained and there are some rare trees and plants here. It also has a very large Victorian green house growing many flourishing tropical plants. Back in the 70s, when the park wasn’t being maintained carefully, I once saw a police raid on an enterprising gardener’s Marijuana crop!

    The morning continued with a drive to see some of the mountainous vistas surrounding Cardiff. We went to Caerphilly, which is famous for its cheese throughout Europe and is also home to another castle.

    All in all, we crossed three valleys to make our way to Neath, 45 miles from Cardiff, where we would visit and have lunch with Penny’s cousin Diane. Penny was born in Neath, and she showed us her birthplace there, a house in which her parents had run a tavern.
    Penny took us all for lunch at the friendly Loft Cafe Restaurant, housed in lovely-situated Glyn Clydach Hotel.

    To get us back home, Penny went via the coastal road, where we saw Porthcawl, 25 miles west of Cardiff, and another house Penny had lived in.
    We visited Cardiff's gorgeous harbor. The architecture of the Wales Millennium Centre is stunning! It was designed to reflect the different regions of Wales, and only local Welsh materials were used in its construction: slate, metal, wood and glass.

The Welsh part of the inscription reads:
“Creating Truth Like Glass From Inspiration’s Furnace”
and the English reads: “In these stones horizons sing”

    It had been another thrilling but tiring day of touring, and we had leftovers for dinner. Everything tasted as good as it had the night before.

On Monday, we had our second and last breakfast at Penny’s before she would drive us to London. At Penny’s suggestion, I packed the rest of the Lizi’s brand low-sugar granola I had bought on Saturday. That’s the same brand we had been buying at Monoprix in Montmarte, and I was delighted to find it in Cardiff. (As I think I have already revealed in a previous entry of this journal, we discovered only when back home in Mebane that Lizi’s is actually a product of Wales.) We later took Penny up on her suggestion that we buy some to take home to Mebane.
      On our return from Neath the day before, Penny had pointed out Wales’s flagship Marks & Spencer department store, and Carolyn expressed a desire to see it. So, before hitting the highway for London, Penny took us see it. She informed us that it

was started by two Jewish brothers back in the late 1800s and has been a staple shopping haunt throughout the UK and Europe. It began as a “penny bazaar” but is now a $multi-million business selling everything from clothes to furniture and food. It even has its own bank and credit card. Known for its quality, it has managed to continue trading whilst others have floundered and failed through the down times.

    The store was huge!

[Thanks to Penny for this and the next two photos]

    We looked at clothing awhile before purchasing sandwiches to eat in the car along the way. Penny filled up her gas tank, and we were off.

English country road
(from Pinterest)

    Penny took one of the UK’s major motorways – the M4, I think – on which we covered most of the 150+ miles to Ealing, the suburb near Kew Gardens where we had hotel reservations. Signs announcing a 90-minute delay between two junctions ahead prompted our exit from the M, at which point Penny exited the freeway and entered the English countryside (in the Oxford area) and drove through terrain we’ve all admired in countless movies and TV programs. This was utterly delightful compared to following the freeway. The roads were as narrow and twisty and occluded as you see in the movies, but Penny wasn’t slowed down.
    Penny drives fast. (“But always within the permitted speed limit of 70 mph,” she points out, “plus I have great brakes!”) Sensing our angst, she reminded us that she had received police driving instruction. And she is rightfully proud of this, for the obviously superior driving skills she has perfected. Her shrewd observations on the driving of other drivers were continually fascinating. She also played a sort of “techno music” (with which I was familiar from what is constantly on at my local fitness center in Mebane). She explained that it has been scientifically proven that music with a fast beat enhances the heart rate and improves one’s driving. My own heart rate was definitely being continually enhanced by our flawless progress along England’s narrow country roads:



    I wish I had been videoing earlier when a car came into view even more suddenly than the van shown in that video clip. (It was that earlier occasion that prompted me to start videoing.) I had yelped and jumped out of my seat. My wife, who was in the back seat, verified this to our daughter: “He was petrified.” (But she told our daughter she wasn’t exactly calm herself: “I took a nitroglycerin tablet.”) Altogether, it was an exciting ride from Cardiff to Ealing in the front passenger seat of a racing-driver’s car!

Penny deposited us at about 1 p.m. at the door of the Xanadu Hotel in Ealing, which Carolyn chose for its excellent proximity to Kew Gardens, mention of which reminds me that our “side trip” there is another adventure I need to write up for this journal!
    Over the time of our visit in Wales, Penny continually hosted us with pounding energy and heart, in a way that only someone greatly attached to a place can do. With seemingly infinite reserves of energy, Penny drove us hundreds of kilometers on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. We are deeply indebted to her for her kindness.

Copyright © 2017 by Moristotle