Misty Walk around Cardiff Bay

We normally go on a family walk sometime between Christmas and New Year. We're not all together at Christmas or New Year, so coming together, albeit briefly sometime in the intervening days is a great chance to catch up, get some fresh air and walk off some of the yuletide excesses.
Wit ages ranging between 8 and 70, we don't go far, and several times over the last few years we've done a circular walk around Cardiff Bay. It's ideal - at 4 miles it's far enough to make it a worthwhile walk without overkill. It's flat. It's not muddy (pretty much all paved, and certainly all paths), and there are a multitude of refreshment points half way round at Mermaid Quay. We've been blessed with some decent weather in previous years, but this year 27th December dawned gloomy and damp.
We started as normal from the free car park off Marconi Way in Penarth Marina Park and headed in a clockwise direction over the Ely via the Pony y Werin bridge.

River Ely from Pont y Werin bridge

From there we walked down past the ice rink and onto the boardwalk. The misty gloom contributed to an atmospheric picture as sailing boats in the bay slowly appeared out of the mist, one boat standing out due to its luminous sail.

Sailing boats in the bay

From the relative peacefulness of the boardwalk, we moved onto the road bridge carrying the A4232 over the Taff. Always busy and noisy, this part of the walk normally provides some great photo opportunities of the bay, but the fog played havoc with that. All we could see was one water bus coming down the Taff into the bay. In one corner near Cardiff Yacht Club, various detritus had gathered, having floated down the Taff and Ely rivers into the bay. It was fascinating, and though somewhat sad to see at least a dozen footballs in that single area that probably once gave so much fun to someone. On the plus side, it gave me a chance to post the photo to the Twitter account @lostfootballs!

Lost Footballs

Escaping the roar of road noise, we took the path into the Cardiff Wetlands reserve, heading towards the St Davids hotel, with a quick detour down the boardwalk to get closer to the various swans, dusk's, coots, grebes and other associated waterfowl that call the bay their home.
From St Davids hotel we wandered into Mermaid Quay, and met up with some more family in the Wetherspoon's Mount Stuart for some much needed refreshments!

Once fed and watered (ok, alright, beered), we walked past the rest of Mermaid Quay, the magnificent Pierhead building, the Send and Norwegian Church, before making our way past the vast empty space that until recently housed the Dr Who exhibition. On the way, it was a fantastic opportunity to take some really atmospheric snaps that the misty weather enabled of the old moorings, and various boats coming out of, or disappearing into the mist.

Old moorings

Water taxi disappearing into the gloom

Boat coming into moor

The disappearance of the Dr Who exhibition allowed for a nice reflection shot in a puddle on the concrete.

Refelections

From here we wound past the old disused locks, and onto the barrage proper. The tide was way out - as low as I've ever seen it, showing the mud flats and the deep channel into the still working port. The by now dry, if not clear day, had clearly got people out and about from their cosy homes to walk off the Christmas calories and the barrage was pretty busy. The mist was so bad, that you couldn't see Penarth Head, only the first couple of floors of St Davids hotel were visible, and the tops of the flats alongside the A4232 and across towards the Cogan spur were all but invisible.

The sea locks at the Penarth end of the barrage are always a fascinating site to behold. The deep locks, the creaks and the rushing of water over the fish ladders. The little pink shack on the end of the harbour wall was just visible with the guiding lights shining out of the mist, and as is usual, I didn't pass up the opportunity to stand on the spot that gave me the perfect shot of the concentric circles where they all come together.

Harbour entrance wall and guiding lights

Circle Art

Almost at our walks end we crossed into Penarth Marina, across the bridge and back alongside the river Ely before returning to the car park.

Penarth Marina

We've done this walk many times. Usually in dryer, bright conditions. However, the walk today gave an opportunity to see (or not see) the bay in a completely different light (quite literally), but it was no less interesting for that, and some of the photos I took I was really please with, as it provided a unique atmosphere to the shots.

It's a great walk whichever way round you do it. A decent guide can be found from Derek Brockway's "Weatherman Walking" website. The PDF of the walk is available here.

Brexit. What a stinking mess.....

I’m not a political person. I don’t trust (most) politicians from any party. Some local councillors are ok to be fair, but even then not all of them. Politicians say what they want you to hear. They can’t give a straight answer a straight question. They tell lies (remember the  big red bus and the £350 million for the NHS?) And too many of them over the years have been shown to not have any grip on reality 

I don’t profess to understand Brexit. After three years I’m still struggling to understand what a backstop is (we used to have them when I played cricket as a kid) or what ‘no deal’ really means (for the eejits out there I know at least that it isn’t not leaving the EU as some seem to think).

What I do know is this. David Cameron in his infinite wisdom (perhaps ‘wisdom’ is the wrong word here), decided to go to the country to ask whether we should leave the EU or not. Clearly no one thought for a moment that the country would vote Leave. But vote Leave they did - by a fine margin. Whoops. Didn’t see that coming. Clearly no one (we’ll Dave anyway) had really considered what leaving would mean apart from the chance to have a nice blue passport, and as a result we’ve spent the last three years trying to work it out. 

Dave, having realised his faux pas promptly legged it, and no one has seen or heard from him since. 

So the incumbent government under the leadership of Remainer Mrs May, has ploughed on regardless. “It’s what people voted for”. “It’s what they want” is what we hear. Erm, no it isn’t. It’s what just over half voted for with no understanding of what leaving would actually mean. Anyone who did  know wasn’t admitting it. Maybe people though it was about getting bendy cucumbers or gnarly tomatoes back and not being told what to do by those nasty people in Brussels. Personally I suspect many of the people who voted Leave just did so to stick one up the Tories backside, a sort of general election by proxy if you will. Anyhow, here we are. 

Brexit is less than a month away as I write this and we’re still none the clearer on what this actually means or the impact it will have. The doom mongers would have us believe there will be shortages of food, medicines, and no people to do the jobs that no British people want to do. Foreign nationals, some who have been in the UK a long tine are genuinely fearing for their future. The Brexiteers are jumping for joy that we’ll be rid of that nasty EU who tie us into legislation and stuff like that whilst hastily shifting their business and money overseas

Businesses meanwhile generally seem pretty worried by the prospect. A friend of mine in an important job in a massive organisation has said he’s had to buy shedloads of stuff (millions of pounds worth) just in case because he’s got no clue what the impact of Brexit will actually be but fears it will raise prices dramatically. And he’s a very clever chap (much cleverer than any politician I’d argue). 

What really annoys me is that we’ve spent three years buggering about. As a country we must have spent millions if not billions on this. The time, effort and energy could have been spent on things of much greater importance. The NHS for one, but many other things besides. Roads, schools, etc. You get the idea. 

It’s hard to see a resolution with any positive outcome at this point. Our leaders (and I say that with tongue firmly in cheek) keep saying it’s the will of the people (well it was about the will of half of them three years ago when we knew nothing of the mayhem to come) and that no deal is better than a bad deal -(remember eejits, that no deal doesn’t mean no Brexit).

Well for what it’s worth I think the politicians (on all sides) have well and truly put the country in a worse place now than we were three years ago, and who knows where we’ll be in another three years time.

I’m off for a pint before the country runs out of beer.  At least I’ll have a new blue passport when the time comes to renew mine.