It has a double summit. Not in the sense that the largest mountains in the world have but it is there nonetheless. Your legs are already filling with the lactic acid that makes each step laborious but when you crest the incline after 400 metres of steep hillwalking at a tough gradient, you could be forgiven for uttering a curse as you realise there is still more climbing to be done. It is not much of a trek admittedly, no more than another 75 metres or so and the softer incline is hardly a killer, but you feel it seep into your legs nonetheless.
As you crest this second summit however, the numbing of your thighs is replaced with a sharp intake of breath as you gaze out over a view that has both beguiled and enchanted me so often. As you take stock from your plateaued viewpoint, you can see the whole of Cardiff stretched out before you. A patchwork tapestry of every hue stitched together with the long grey stitches of arterial roads and the green and blue knots of woods and waterways.
Through the wooded hills that surround Cardiff to the North you can catch glimpse of the fairy tale rotunda of Castle Coch, a castle that isn’t a castle, a home that was never a home, yet doffs a folly’s cap to the wealth that once existed with the nobility that called Cardiff their home. Majestic by day, yet ethereal at night. The pale luminescence changes the appearance into a spectral form, almost as if the moon itself has taken residence within the walls. A softly glowing sentinel that watches with the patience that only those that measure time in seasons can contemplate.
It stares over the tree lined suburbs of north Cardiff, the garden village of Rhiwbina, white washed walls of eras passed, an inaudible echo of a more sedate time. You can see the parcs, not parks, that make this a utopian idyll for twilight wildlife venturing from their safe havens in the foothills. Foxes, squirrels and even the occasional badger that cocks a striped head at the deathly sound of the owl swooping to end the skitterish existence of an unidentified rodent. Life and death chases, a sinister mirror to the games played and picnics eaten during the lighter hours, where trees shade children and offer relief to the gossip and the fish wife.
The same pattern is repeated over the other boroughs of the north. Llanishen, the forgotten gem with its reservoir and hidden fields, known only to the locals. Thornhill, the Surtsey of Cardiff, a young suburb that carries the task of burning the dead. A pyre for the tired and weary, the ash that gave rise to the foundations of a thousand families. From here you can return to the hills and become lost or travel west to the nouveau riche. Lisvane and then Cyncoed, faux mansions that serve as an aspiration to so many and keep the bankers happy. The winding streets and manicured lawns that offer little hope for daisies to form a chain, where the dogs have a pedigree and the cats lap cream.
So look right, for to the right of Rhiwbina is its noisy neighbour, Whitchurch. The hub of North Cardiff. Alive in the day and drunk at night. An upstart that offers more than it can deliver but delivers all the same. A village that thinks it is a town and why not? It is a magnet that attracts gold and scrap in equal measure. If Whitchurch had a face, it would always wear a smile. Coryton claims sovereignty from Whitchurch but to no avail, the prettier sister but the poorer relation nonetheless for it shall never grow.
Leave this villown or towlage and you will see the North of Llandaff. A proper suburb with no pretention or juvenile angst, just reality in all it is. It thrives without flourishing, flourishes without thought of blossom or bud. If it could be renamed, perhaps Cuprinol would be most apt.
Let’s head back again though, we shall come to Llandaff again, the City within a city, an oblast of opulence. We shall enter the Gabalfan jungle, a place of urban myth and untold truths. Reputed as rough but offering the soft underbelly of a real community, a throwback those other suburbs could never hope to emulate. A truth shines through the tarnished edges that makes it a place I could call home and once did.
As you travel into the heart of this city you will see far less the upturned nose or the narcissistic snobbery of the faintly blessed. You will see the sinew, the grit and the muscle, you’ll feel the pulse and hear the rhythmic beating of the vessels that allow Cardiff to support the north.
Here you will find the Heaths and the Birchgroves, the Cathays and the Fairwaters. The houses cost less but the value remains the same in what they bring to the whole. The parks, the leisure centres, the hardening accents and the smaller lawns. Who need worry about a lawn when this city is awash with such abundant parklife? There is more grass in Cardiff than a thousand Woodstock concerts could claim and the high is gained from this realisation. The air is full not of the depressed smog that a mundane existence creates, but rather the zephyr of hope, of dreams and inspiration. An oasis of honesty amongst the fallacy of foolhardy thought.
As you enter the city through the aortic throb of the traffic, or through the oft ignored capillaries that stretch like gossamer threads alongside rivers and ancient routes shadowed by Cathedrals and ruined walls, you hear it. Like the drone of a hummingbirds wings, you cannot quite place the source but it is there, ever-present. It is life, it is the soft murmuring and the loudest drum. It fills your ears with a tune you cannot replicate. To attempt to understand it, to find reason, would drive you insane. The heart of a city that wants to be a town, the heart of a city that could be a village. Far removed from a madman’s folly in the hill stands a monument to our own heritage, a gargoyle carved from stone at every step to guard the mausoleum of what once was, but yet still is. The castle, THE castle, a castle. Stared at like an aging hermit by the throngs of the uneducated eyes of mannequins in shops that boast of metropolitan birth but are just sheep in a shopping pen. At Christmas the gargoyles eyes come to life, seeing the stalls and the craft, a market that stands briefly, a stick caught in an eddy of modernisation before it is washed away for another year. I love but hate this city, for the ability it has to betray its own roots yet at the same time encapsulate them perfectly. To use these roots to ensnare me, but allow me the freedom to roam the word knowing that where my eyes fall my heart rests only in one place.
Away from this black and gold heart lays the birthplace of the city. The houses that fill the Grangetown and Splott areas, that make up Canton and Roath are hewn from stone but were made from coal. This whole city for all its glass and stylised shop fronts, bravado and cosmopolitan pretence was carved from the valleys that some are ashamed to turn to. For the fancy boutique that carries trends that die as fast as a mayfly, for the overpriced and short lived fad bars and clubs, there was blood spilled and death aplenty under the ground not so far from here. A forgotten era, a foundation of minor miners and colliery catastrophes that fed life to the town. The city. The village. My home is my castle. My folly.
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