A regenerated Cardiff waterfront

After a little boat polishing (winter is coming...) a cycle trip into Cardiff in the sun (yes, sun in Wales in late September!) allowed us to explore the newly regenerated waterside area. Nice job for the many millions that were invested. The transformation is quite something, from a muddy mess at low water and the delights of Tiger Bay (bring your own gun) to a huge freshwater lagoon home to plenty of fish and a waterfront eating and walking area to rival Gunwharf in Portsmouth.

We stopped to grab a few pictures en route of course  Here is the old Pierhead house, millennium building (copper colour in the background) and the Welsh assembly building. Not at all like Scotland - no "Vote yes for independence" banners here. Not like Bangor either - the clock was working:

The Millennium building - a theatre etc is pretty impressive:

Think we will be visiting that this winter.

A church built to care for Norwegian sailors which was in a bad state got dismantled, stored, repaired and rebuilt as part of the dockland renewal scheme. Now a lovely arts center:

Sitting drinking coffee watching the world go by in the new waterfront complex was very pleasant. Probably more so for the crew as the  local Firemen who were on strike had decided to congregate there too. Lots of very happy ladies for a few hours.

The area has some good sculptures / monuments too - this one is for Captain Scott's ill fated Arctic expedition which set sail from Cardiff in 1910 - it was built to commemerate the 100 year anniversary:

Of course, the local mining heritage had to be covered too:

And every self respecting waterside location needs an old lighthouse converted into showers, restaurant, visitor centre, whatever:

Just to prove that we did cycle, the little fold up bikes had a guardian whilst the captain was busy with the camera. Cannot imagine that anyone would want to steal them though - no street cred with these. Marginally more than with a trolley shopper though:

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The evening turned into an impromptu return there by boat. Steve, the waterbus man and his partner Jane (and their lovely spaniel Bronwen) invited us to join them on their old launch for a trip back to the waterfront area. For the avoidance of doubt, Jane is lovely too just in case you wish to misinterpret that line. So is the launch. A beautiful trip on board a 1950's launch built for Tresco island (Scilly) which has transported most of the royal family in her time. Then it got us.. For the mechanically minded, she (Soleil D'Or)  has the compulsory old Gardner diesel that revs slowly and sounds just wonderful. You can see her on the historic ships register http://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/2106/soleil-dor

A great and unplanned end to an excellent day.