A birthday and travel to Cardiff (8 November 2024)

Our hotel for two nights

The days are getting shorter very quickly.  The sun gets up around 7:30am and sets around 4:30pm.  However with the thick cloud cover it is quite dark around 4pm.  Similarly it is not very light before about 8am.  It makes for a much smaller window for doing things, particularly as I am finding driving in the dark a bit of a challenge with my developing cataracts.  It is also much cooler with the daytime temperatures now maxing around 11 degrees.

 

It was time to move on again.  The little pub was very cute and it was interesting to see the locals who came in each evening and then others who came to eat in the evening generally filling the pub.  The food was pub food and I missed having lots of vegetables but that is not what the locals eat it seems. 

 

The route took us via an A road and motorway to our destination, Cardiff.  It was nice to be on a wider and faster road. 

 

Bev wanted to visit Port Talbot which was on the way to Cardiff. She had an Aunt who grew up there and wanted to see what it was like. It has a steel mill which was one of the largest in the world but it has closed and is now awaiting an electric arc furnace that will make the steel.  This is similar to the process that will be operational in Glenbrook sometime in the future. 

 

Bev wanted to see the port and after a bit of pfaffing around I finally figured out where to look at it.  The houses on the route were interesting to see, all the same and I suspect they were built in Victorian times to house the steel workers.  They were well cared for. 

 

A Port Talbot street

We quickly found our Airbnb and dropped our bags there.  The host was an Aussie who had lived in the UK for 46  years and wanted to return to Perth where he would die.  He seemed to be missing it more and more as he got older. 

 

We took the car back to the rental company and that took much longer than expected due to the branch having closed and us not having a clue.  Eventually we found it and were given a lift back to the railway station so we could get a bus back to our accommodation.  Bev and had got a recommendation for a good restaurant that fortuitously was just down the road. 

 

It was a very nice restaurant with rather good food served and serving sizes that were less rather than more.  After sharing a chicken liver parfait I had a miso cauliflower and romesco steak.  Vegetarian and it was very nice.  Having been starved of vegetables it was a welcome change.  The flavours were superb.  At the end of the meal, having turned down a dessert, Bev was presented with a piece of rich chocolate cake that had a candle and a Happy Birthday written on a piece chocolate.  It was quite a treat. 


Our chicken liver parfait

My cauliflower steak - it tasted better than it looks

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