When I decided to move back to Wales, I started looking for somewhere to live around Cardiff.
Many of my friends in Kent and London wondered why I was moving to "an industrial dead sport," but if like them you have not visited modern Cardiff, I will tell you why I moved back.
I had moved to Tunbridge Wells in Kent from the south Midlands in the early 1990's, just as the M25 was finished making cross-London travel in under 2hrs possible. I worked on projects involving both the Channel tunnel and internationally for over 10 years, and such was the size and scale of Kent that at the time, my journey to Folkestone or Dover was twice as long as getting to Heathrow Airport. being able to check-in at the BA desks in Gatwick's North terminal were a mere 40minutes from my front door (as I knew for 4years), and Stanstead a mere hour.
I spent many good nights in Kent, but why when the capital city is but a £12 train ride away with its world class theatre, or the delights of real French food in Calais two hours away and a £12 ferry ride after 4o'clock, did I need to bother with mere Kent?
The result when house hunting was that some towns and villages in Kent were seen as "dormitory" towns, were people merely slept. One has to wonder why they merely slept in Kent when the trains at the time were over 40 years of age, but that was always answered by the (most often expectant) Friday night couples commuting down the various railway lines they had picked out, to view houses in which their "bump" could enjoy the Garden of England.
The most enjoyable parts of Kent are the districts closest to the coast. Here, some 2hours away from London and with infrequent train services, the culture was distinct and friendly. Real English village life continued, and it was only on summer weekends that the new metro-sexual Britain ever invaded.
But by the time I finished international commuting in 2002, Kent became a proverbial PiB for work. Firstly, the M25 was continually being rebuilt, from 2 lanes to 3, then 3 to 4, and finally 6 lanes from the M3 to the M4. The reason was the number of foreign lorries commuting round it from Dover, which meant that the inside lane or two was continually littered with left hand drive lorries doing around 45mph/60kmh, which meant that at last angst-ridden Fiesta drivers had a reason to stay in the outside lane. This excess traffic and many left hand drive lorries had by 2002 resulted in around 6 accidents a day on the M25, which for every minute the system was closed created an additional 1mile of tailbacks and queuing traffic
This meant that much as though Heathrow that had been a 1hr+ drive away, was now best managed in a 3hour drive n average. Three journeys returning from Oxford in summer 2004 took an average of eight hours; something that on the outbound had taken around 2hours.
It was on the last of these Oxford journeys that I remembered with some fondness some business trips out to Cardiff, which were 210mile one way journeys. Reading was about the mid-point, where I would stop and buy a cup of coffee to relax and stretch. But, and here's the point, Reading was actually 2/3rds the way to Cardiff in time. After Reading, my car cruised along at 70mph; before Reading, it would average at best 40!
Towards the end of my business time in Cardiff, I had spent a couple of weekends in hotels. Life was a lot easier paced down here, and there was a distinct flavour to the culture. Further, all the scary parts of Cardiff were now the places to live. What was once drug and vice ridden Tiger Bay and Docks was now upmarket Cardiff Bay: which someone had put a concrete plug-in to give us all a water front. And as Cardiff is a capital city, we had all those capital city type things going on. care to name where the greatest number of French classical paintings outside France are held? Its not New York, its not London, and its not somewhere in Asia!
I always said to myself that I would retire to Cardiff, so good was the public transport. In Kent, I used public transport in December to avoid the drunks and risk of drink-driving. The bus came every hour, and charged me £5 return for a 12minute journey on a 1960s bus. In Cardiff, that's a less than 10year old bus every 6mins that charges me £3, and takes me almost into Bridgend from Newport. Plus, thanks to First Great Western, I was a whole 40mins further out of London time wise than I was in Tunbridge Wells, and sat on a modern train in which I didn't have to stand for the entire commute.
So one day, sitting down at home after one of those long Oxford journeys, I though - blow, I'm moving to Cardiff!
Monday, 8 February 2010
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