Next to Cardiff
Swindon, this is Swindon.
From Oxford I headed west towards Old South Wales (not "new", note). As always, I try to add a few curious (to me) twists into the trip. First, of course, was a football ground. Swindon Town's County Ground was on the way, so... got to stop for selfie video.
I was planning to include East Coker, home of Elaine Morgan's parents, but Somerset was too far out of the way. Next time.
Instead, I headed to Purton, birthplace of that Oxford segue, Desmond Morris.
Purton, where no-one knew it was the birthplace of Desmond Morris
Purton is a typically cute English country village but, very disappointingly, no one there knew Desmond Morris was one of their favourite sons.
They had a cute old Co-op that reminded me of what they looked like in my youth, a library that was closed but a bizarre telephone booth outside where books could be exchanged and, I was heartened to see, a town hall flying the Ukrainian flag.
There were a few senior citizens at the community club but none of them knew about Desmond Morris. Instead, they regaled me with tails of another of their famous sons, Nevil Maselyne, the fifth astronomer royal.
Getting Soaked in Mountain Ash whilst seeing Elaine once again
Next, it was the quite familiar drive across the Seven Bridge into South Wales. I'd done this trip several times to meet my hero, Elaine Morgan but, alas, this was the first time I'd been since she passed away in 2013.
I wasn't going to let something like that put me off reliving her memory, so I set off, once more, for Mountain Ash to see if I could find a statue in her honour.
As I pulled into the appropriately named Oxford Road, the heavens opened and it literally poured with rain for half an hour. I scrambled out of the car to put my raincoat on to see what I could find.
Disappointingly, Mountain Ash library was closed but the nearby doctor's surgery where Elaine Statue stood proudly was open.
Soaked in Cardiff
It was still chucking it down as I drove back down the valley to Cardiff.
My B & B was lovely and it was great to change into dry clothes before setting out to explore a bit of the rain soaked city.
I had no problem getting tickets at Wimbledon and Oxford and, of course, thanks to Jake's mate Steve, even less getting one for the Arsenal v Forest match, (Just leaving Oxford I finally bought tickets for Forest v Spurs next week, so now will see all three Forest home games.)
But... Cardiff City's web site had a few problems meaning I couldn't purchase my seat in advance. I wasted a frustrating 45 minutes in a bar opposite the castle trying to do that before giving up and deciding to try to buy one at the gate - bizarrely a rare thing to do these days.
I had lovely fish & chips (good old Dorothy's) and a great pint at the Cambrian Tap before getting a cab to beat the rain and arrive at the Cardiff City stadium.
Thank you, Gentleman Graham
I went to old Ninian Park, Cardiff's old ground back in 1977 but they'd long since moved into a sparkling new stadium called, "The Cardiff City Stadium" - it's like it says on the tin but it's hardly a romantic name.I arrived quite nervous. It's unusual to turn up to a match these days without a ticket to get in.
There was a Ticket & Collections counter but they told me to go to the ticket office around the corner. This I did. There was a long queue and some (Watford) fans had been told to go round to the away end. I started to panic when they were asking for club membership Id cards. Crikey, Mrs Thatcher's plan to have every football fan registered, which seemed so abhorrent back in the day, seems to have come true.
Maybe I wouldn't get in after all this.
Suddenly, out of the dark, I heard a lovely Welsh accent "Do you want a ticket for the game? No charge. You can come and sit with me." Apparently his three friends couldn't attend tonight so he had some spare seats and he was happy to give them to anyone who wanted them.
Wow. Thank you so much!
He tried to offer this one-off deal to a few others who all seemed to suspect something dodgy before a couple of young lads agreed to come with us.
These were among the best seats in the ground and gave us access to the Ricoh Lounge, a kind of corporate bar setting.
I thought this was too good to be true. We had a pint and a nice chat with Graham. One of the other two was a actually a Cardiff City season ticket holder but his mate, Pwyll (how about that for a good old Welsh name, I think pronounced 'Pwees".) was fairly new, hence them queueing up for tickets.
It was a good match and Cardiff started well went 1-0 with a Kipre header. Slavan Bilic's Watford team settled though and gradually came back into the game before a Sieralta equaliser just before half time.
I was hoping to spot James Dean Bradfield, another South Wales hero, as I know he's a Cardiff fan (ironically after being a Forest fan as a boy) but he was nowhere to be seen.
In the second half, Watford scored the winner and despite a huge effort from the Bluebirds, they hung on to all three points.
Thank you again, Graham. If anyone in South Wales is looking to buy a used car, I would certainly recommend buying one from this very kind and lovely man.
After the match, it had stopped raining so I walked back to my B & B, via a couple of proper pubs.
What a lovely day. 16-0 and another ground caught up.
