A quick trip to Cardiff

We took a quick and unplanned trip to Cardiff to see my sisters, flying out on Monday to Gatwick to take the train via Reading to Cardiff, then returning on Friday afternoon to Bordeaux.

The plane left early so we packed our bags and stayed overnight in a hotel near the airport so we could get to the airport on time. The flight was calm and we dozed. At Gatwick we needed to listen carefully to the announcements because points failures near Redhill had caused widespread disruption. So instead of our Reading train we were sent to Victoria, then by tube to Paddington to take the train to Cardiff. Friendly staff helped and we eventually arrived just 30 minutes later than planned.

We'd arranged to stay with friends in the area where Alan used to live and they kindly picked us up from the station, then fed us before sending us off to Kath's house, a ten minute walk away.

We were thankful to spend a good quantity of quality time with the two sisters before returning, this time via National Express from Cardiff to Bristol Airport, then another calm plane to Bordeaux.

The weather was foul, but we spent a morning mooching round the Cardiff arcades and the old library building with its amazing tiled corridor.











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit about music exams in UK and France

They're really different. I think I have already mentioned that while in the UK people generally find a private teacher for their instrument, or do it through a school scheme, here there are municipal music school, conservatoires and so on. The situation is a little more complex than I had first understood, because the schools vary in the rigidity of their organisation: the most, the conservatoires, next the municipals, then the associations. Our music school is an association, but it tends to apply the standards of the municipal schools with its programme of cycles, etc. Britain - grade 1 to 8, grade 8 being roughly equivalent to A-level, pre university/conservatoire. France - 3 cycles, each taking about 4 years, with 3ème cycle being roughly equivalent to grade 8. Theory of music - UK to take grade 8 you need theory grade 5. In France you study theory alongside your instrumental studies, very slowly. Catrin's flute music is MUCH more difficult than the stuff she does in theor
Read more

A brief sortie to North Wales

 Following the Great Keswick Debacle, when our volunteering at the Keswick café was sabotaged by our assorted indispositions, we had airline tickets to use up. Yes, we had not taken travel insurance, so we paid even more money to change our tickets to fly for a short visit to North Wales. This time we were able to go. We passed extremely slowly through a very crowded Bordeaux airport but in good time to get our plane. All seats in the terminal were taken so we leaned against whatever we could find while waiting to board. Hey, bags need seats, too! though sometimes pointing out to Pat, "No, that's a bag seat", makes the bag find a new refuge on the lap of the person sitting next to it... Once on the plane we quickly found our allocated seats - right at the back on the left hand side - stowed our bags and the flight was smooth and uneventful.  We had 30 minutes in Manchester to disembark, get through immigration , hustle off to the station and board our train for Shotton. I
Read more