I guess I can understand why people want to read on trains, I have done so on many an occasion when I am on a route I frequently travel. But today when I am travelling into new and unknown pastures it seems needless to bring anything more for the journey than my Ipod. I wanted to use the opportunity to soak up where I was going and even now as I draft parts of this entry on the train, I am glancing up more at the passing scenery than I am writing. Soon enough I will put paper down and watch the landscape roll by.
All around me adults are sleeping (it is 8:30am on a Saturday morning and I have been up since 6!) or are reading newspapers. Most are also hidden in plain sight by a pair of headphones much like I am. Only the small child sitting in front of me is taking in the joy of a journey and a landscape never seen before and not seen for long. I find this kind of sad yet endemic of life today. People are so intent to get to where they are going that they forget to just enjoy the journey. I'm not saying I am not also prone to this but I guess this journey today brought that little snippet of thought to the surface.
The only thing that would make it better would be for the train to have a steam engine.
As to Cardiff itself, well the weather took a while to improve. After starting out beautiful and sunny the clouds rolled in while in the Swindon area and stayed until midday in Cardiff. I was somewhat upset to see the bright morning skies disappear under cloud and the wide flat fields and gently rolling hills of western England become that little bit murky. It was defiantly autumnal weather. I had been 'promised' excellent sunshine and I was keen to steal a last bright and sunny day before winter set in. While the morning was less than perfect It did improve markedly. In fact as soon as the sun came out it became very hot, almost unseasonable.
Cardiff struck me as very quiet for a Saturday, I soon found out that that was due to two things. The cheese festival in the Castle and the newly opened 'largest John Lewis store in Wales' absorbing the majority of the population. Now while I had first hand experience of the packed John Lewis store (I went in there to look for a loose leaf tea strainer device and yes it really really was a mistake) seeing the quantity of people in the cheese festival was coincidental.
After walking around Cardiff and the bay all day I had got most of the photographs that I wanted including images of the Castle, Millennium Stadium and an unrelated to my practice yet amusing shot of the closed up entrance to 'Torchwood's Hub' by about 4pm. While wandering through the city centre in the last of the decent light I came across a church that I had tried to get a photograph of earlier. While trying again (with much better light this time) I spotted people on the tower top. I decide to investigate further and found for the small donation of a pound I could also go up for as long as I liked. It was a long climb on very steep winding stairs and included an angry buzzing insect of some kind (I assumed it was a wasp but was paying more attention to my steps that whatever it was I had just disturbed) but I got some excellent views of Cardiff, including into the grounds of the Castle and of the sheer numbers of people milling around for cheese.
These days out are all about the exploration, the journey. Granted there are rules and ways in which the day can be made preferential but most of these you cannot control nor should you worry about trying to do so. The final product, the goal, is the collection of postcards and photographs from the day, but to get there you must enjoy the journey, let your day unfurl as it wants to, embrace the oddities, unusual occurrences and strange urgings you get to investigate places that may or may not end up being interesting and give you that one photo you want to make into a work of art.
Relish the meandering path.
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