We spent the morning in Southern Wales, crossing the England-Wales border at the Prince of Wales Bridge (see second photo), then winding through pretty scenery along the motorway to Cardiff the capital of Wales.

The first thing we noticed about Wales was that all of the signage is written in both English and Welsh. We’re all pretty good with figuring out languages, but Welsh is very different to anything we had seen before so looked especially challenging to learn. As one of Europe’s oldest living languages, it has Celtic roots and is spoken by almost a third of the Welsh population. I therefore expected to encounter some strong accents but was surprised to find that if anything, the people we spoke with were easier to understand than some we had conversed with in England. 

We headed straight to Cardiff Castle and had the opportunity for a good look around the grounds - see post.

We later visited Clevedon Pier on the other side of the Bristol Channel and could see Southern Wales across the water, including the Prince of Wales Bridge and Cardiff – see the last two photos above, also see related post.

Although our visit to Cardiff was brief and I didn’t know much about Wales before we arrived, it’s definitely an area I’d like to return to and explore more.