Cardiff Castle

So obvious, in fact, I'm amazed I haven't done this episode already.

And that is Cardiff Castle.

Cardiff Castle, Castell Caerdydd, bang in the middle of the capital city, bang in the middle of Cardiff, a place that combines some good old folkloric hauntings and some more modern day scares.

But what I want to focus on on this episode is the family behind creating the castle as we see it today because some members of this family so the story goes are still lingering to this day while others were pioneering ghost hunters in their own right and so To begin at the beginning.

And I hate using the phrase steeped in history.

It's been overused, probably by myself.

I'm sure I've used it a thousand times in my days as a journalist.

But nevertheless, if anywhere is steeped in history, then Cardiff Castle is steeped in history.

don't revise, we don't research.

So the Dragon's Back Race is a 236-mile ultra-stage race across the mountainous spine of Wales from Conwy Castle to Cardiff Castle, featuring 16,400 metres of elevation.

What? Yeah.

gain over six days.

it? Wales.

Wales.

And what's it over the glitters? It's Conwy Castle right down to Cardiff Castle, so it goes over loads of different mountains.

Is that 3,000? No, it used to go over Snowdon and I don't think it does anymore.

Welcome to the UK Run Chat podcast.

The Dragon's Back Race is a six-day mountain running challenge across Wales, covering around 380 kilometres from Conwy Castle to Cardiff Castle, with more than 16,000 metres of ascent.

It's a race that demands a huge amount physically and mentally, and this year, just 53 of the 210 starters completed the full course.

I'm joined by this year's male and female winners, Danny Smith and Isabel Turner.

Yeah, you're exhausted, you know.

And I remember like when you did Cardiff Castle, which is the most bizarre, I mean, I've got to say, it was the day of BBC had this kind of mad thing, which was like the day of music, right? Celebration of the regions and stuff like that.

So we had Northern Ireland, Scotland, because of... and England and all that.

And then Northern Ireland had some sort of banshee band kind of thing, like pogrons and all that kind of stuff.

Fourth word in.

Yeah.

And it was kind of like this, it was kind of such a kind of a weird thing because we got used to the whole dense kind of like darkness and then we're playing a Cardiff Castle live for fucking BBC Music Day.

You're doing that.

So the first one is very timely.

We have this little park in central Cardiff called Alexandra Gardens, which is actually quite central relatively, but at the same time, something even local people don't know exists so it's the little public park kind of hidden in amongst a rectangle of very nice kind of a edwardian early 20th century neoclassical style build and that's where car it's where cardiff university is and carter city hall and the main museum and the the courthouse and all these fancy buildings but in between all of them is this little little green park now it's only like know two or three minute walk from the very center of town like from cardiff castle for example but even i was in it a few days ago and i overheard a local walking past talking to their friends and the woman said i never knew this park existed you know even though it's right in the center of center of town and the reason why it's you know first on the list today is because it is like the perfect time of the year to visit it this exact week of course i'm sure you're not you're not publishing this chat this week but yeah but so something for next year um because it's full of cherry blossom trees basically and it's like that's the perfect time of the of the year for them it's like the two week window where these trees come out in full bloom and the whole park is basically just pink with you know hints of white as well and on top of that there's also lots of tulips that are in full bloom in the park as well it's quite a small park right but it's just full of full of colors at the moment so it's lots of purple tulips yellow tulips pink cherry blossom trees all in full bloom at exactly the same time but also scattered scattered amongst them you don't have lots of interesting memorials and monuments to different things that again people don't often realize exist like the the wales national war memorial for the world wars the falkland islands memorial the commonwealth memorial for people who died uh during the world wars from other countries around the world, statues to different figures involved in finding Cardiff University and so on.

So it's the Spanish Civil War Memorial, for example.

So basically it's just, yeah, it's on my mind at the moment because it is the perfect time to visit it.

It's supposed to be Paris and Moscow and Sydney and other parts of the U.K. and so on.

So Cardiff is kind of just doubling up.

So things like Cardiff Castle portray the Tower of London or the Great Wall of China somehow.

Or Cardiff City Hall plays the White House in Washington, D.C.

It's like all reunion, really.

But because three Royal Welsh is in Cardiff, And they were finishing in Cardiff Castle.

They said, oh, look, we'll give the Royal Welsh two places.

Yeah.

My parents once went to see...

Simply Red in Cardiff Castle.

Sponsored by Métis.

Decided as a way to sneak in wine, they were going to empty out Métis bottles.

And as we know, Buckingham started raising troops in the late summer of 1483 with, again, depending on which source or modern history you read, he was either going to free the princes in the tower and when he found out that they were dead or changed his mind and opted to seek the throne himself and he made a common pact with Henry Tudor and Tudor was going to land on the south coast and Buckingham was going to bring his troops over the Severn from Wales because he had his power base at Brecon.

And Sir James Tyrrell had, long before this, had been appointed Sheriff of Glamorgan and Constable of Cardiff Castle, which is not far from Brecon, of course.

And So obviously, James had a lot of responsibility for security in the Southwest.

And he was also married to a Cornish heiress as well.