Picspam | Cardiff 2009

[galathea]

So, usually I don't post personal stuff in this journal, but I thought I'll make an exception for this one. :) This summer nikkimisplaced and I visited llywela13 in Cardiff for a couple of days. We wanted to meet each other for years, but RL issues always intervened, so we were all excited that our plans finally worked out this year. We had a fabulous time together and inevitably pictures were taken. So, here's a little picspam of Cardiff & the surrounding area.



First off, I wanted to thank nikkimisplaced and llywela13 for being wonderful hosts and even better company. We pretty much instantly settled into a relaxed and very comfortable routine together that consisted mostly of lazy mornings, long walks around Cardiff over the afternoon and DVD sessions in the evenings. Nikki and I are night persons, whereas Jo is a morning person and so we thought that our combined power would be able to lure Jo to the dark side, but instead it was the other way round. The exercise and the overdose of fresh air pretty much made us drop dead early in the evenings. I can't remember the last time I actually went to bed before midnight! LOL

I have to say that the reports about the rainy welsh weather are vastly exaggerated, because we had sunshine almost every day (as these photos amply prove). I even got a sunburn! It was only once or twice that we actually got wet on our touristy activities. :)

I used a mix of my own and Nikki's and Jo's photos, depending on who got the best shot, but mostly I used Nikki's and Jo's images, because the photos from my camera were very pixel-y on high resolutions. These are on 1200x900px if you click on the thumbnails in my gallery. :) Most of the images have been touched up a bit in Photoshop, but I simply adjusted brightness, contrast, sharpness and colour intensity where necessary, nothing major.

Since we are all camera-shy, you won't see any pictures of any of us here, but I think the prettiness of Cardiff compensates for that. *g* Obviously I only posted a couple of the photos that we took on location, otherwise this post would have been too huge. I hope you enjoy the little assortment. :)

Now, onto the picspam (click on the thumbnails for bigger images):














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St. Fagans is a welsh open-air museum where original buildings from different historical periods have been re-erected - old farmhouses, churches, craft buildings etc. It's like a walk through history. Most of the Doctor Who two-parter 'Family of Blood' has been filmed here. We just watched the episodes 3 days after we visited the grounds and I admit that I didn't pay attention to the background and completely missed it until Chelsea, Jo's little sister, pointed it out to me. *g*














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This is the place that houses the famous Torchwood Hub, well, famous to those of us who watch the Torchwood Series. Looks remarkably intact, considering that they just blew it up in the S3 mini-series. *g* Unfortunately Cardiff festival took place when we were there, so the metal column in the middle was all plastered in strawberry stickers. Not sure if Captain Jack approved of that. ;)










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Roath Park is actually situated in the middle of Cardiff, near the place where Jo used to live. It's a huge area, with nesting water birds. Beautiful! Cosmeston Lakes is a nature preserve near Penarth, that also houses a medieval village. Unfortunately we didn't get to visit that one, but instead we went to see the Penarth Pier (see end of picspam).








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This little fella has been the most fearless squirrel I have ever encountered! It actually came right up to our feet and eyeballed our toes, ready to nibble on them. *g* I am pretty sure we would have been able to hand-feed it. :)




















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In the background of this photo you can see the island Flat Holm, where a good part of the Torchwood episode 'Adrift' was filmed. The island, easily identified by its lighthouse, can be spotted from the Penarth waterfront on a clear day. Unfortunately the boat ride out to the island was too expensive, otherwise we would have visited it as well.

Comments

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, you created gorgeous little postcard subject headers!! ♥ I'm dancing with glee at you finally posting a picspam of your own! ♥

I can't believe how much sunshine we captured in the pictures, considering it was overcast more often than not last week - we were so lucky to catch the very best of the weather, rather than the worst! Apart from that one afternoon, of course.

I should point out, though, that it was Small who first told you about the Family of Blood two-parter being filmed at St Fagans. *G*

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Oops, you're right about Chelsea pointing it out! Edited it right away!

Heh, yeah, the idea with the postcard headers was actually what motivated me to make that picspam in the first place. I am very proud of my fist picspam as well. But man, that's some heavy work picspammers are doing. I have a whole new level of respect for people who make picspams on a regular basis! But at least I finally worked out how to use the whole Scrapbook feature.

Yeah, it was overcast but the sun did always come through the clouds. It was the perfect weather with the mild temperatures, the wind and the sun. :)

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, there is a lot of fiddly work to do with a picspam - although I've become very fond of LJ's scrapbbok feature, which saves a lot of time and effort uploading elsewhere and then pasting the code. I'm also very impressed by how concise you kept it - I always can never decide which pics to use and end up posting far too many!

I love the postcard headers so much.

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

ROFL well, yeah I didn't want to make it too big. You and Nikki have the photos yourselves and I gathered other people are not inclined to wade through more than a couple of photos at a time. ;) It was difficult to choose between all the gorgeous shots, but in the end I just I indulged myself with a lot of seasside/lakes pictures. *g*

I was a bit annoyed that the Scrapbook didn't allow me to manually define the size of the thumbnails, I wanted them in the same size as the headers, but it automatically sizes them down to 320px. But other than that it's a handy feature. :)

Thank you! Glad you love them. *hugs*

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Aye, the thumbnails are automatically generated, so you can't control the size, and that can be a bit of a nuisance. But it is too much of a handy feature to complain!

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

True! I see more picspams in my future. LOL Although with my camera I can only post 640px resolution, even though the images are taken with 1600px, but they are just too pixely in the original size. /sigh

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Hooray - I expect to see pretty, pretty German countryside sometime soon, then *G*

True enough about the poor resolution of camera phone pictures compared with 'real' cameras - I have the same problem when I use the one instead of the other, although it is sometimes necessary, and there are coping strategies for compensating, once you get practice under your belt.

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there are lots of settings for my camera, with which I can influence the quality of the images, so maybe I'll fiddle around with them a bit and see if it gets better. I'll never be a big photographer though. LOL

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm never going to be a great photographer, either, but it can be a lot of fun to play around with it once in a while!

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Heh, the differences in different cameras are stunning. I mean, if you look at the image of the wet pier of Penarth in the postcard header, which was taken with my mobile camera, and photo of the pier that I posted, which was taken with your camera, they look very different. Mine is a more colourful than yours, and that's not a photoshop effect. *g*

[nikkimisplaced.livejournal.com]

Oooh love the picspam honey *hugs*

I wish I was back in Cardiff with you and Jo, just lounging on those comfy sofas chatting and watching DVDs. So relaxing and so much fun to spend time with you both. We definitely have to do it again!

Next year Mike and I are planning on buying a place so maybe Jo can come up for a bit too and we can do Surrey :)

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Heh, glad you like it, hon! :)

I had such a great time, I am totally planning a repeat of this vacation.

Surrey sounds great! Or the Lake District, I've always wanted to see that! ♥

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, buying a place - scary exciting stuff!

Would love to do Surrey sometime - and you can always come back down here any time you want!

[bowtrunckle.livejournal.com]

It sounded like a great time (mmmm long walks). Glad you all enjoyed yourselves. That first picture of Penarth Pier is gorgeous. It looks like something that should be framed and displayed.

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Thank you! We really had a great time.

Oh yeah, the one of the pier is one of my favs as well. It was raining heavily that afternoon and the pier was deserted, but had this wonderful reflections of the stormy sky on the wet planks. Looked gorgeous and I am happy we managed to get it on camera. :)

[ehlwyen.livejournal.com]

Such gorgeous photos!!! ♥ My faves are the last ones of the dock. And I'm so proud I recognized Torchwood from the picspam. LOL

I'm glad you all had a wonderful time! *hugs*

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Thank you, hon! *hugs* LOL whenever we were walking around in Cardiff Jo would suddenly go 'Oh, here's where they shot that scene from Who' and 'Here's where they filmed Ianto doing this' .. and I would have never recognised the places in a million years. Looks all different when you're actually standing there. Except for the big Landmarks like Cardiff Bay. *g*

[minki-moira.livejournal.com]

I WANNA GO THERE!!! WWWWAAAAAA!!!

Anyone living in a place like that is very lucky. Very lucky indeed. even to be able to go on a holiday. *sigh* Such beautiful scenery. And IMO we don't get to see enough of it in Torchwood. lol

I think I recognise a couple of places where the Antiques Roadshow were filmed as well.

[galathea-snb.livejournal.com]

Heh, I know the feeling! :)

I think you can find beautiful spots nearly everywhere, but I love the seaside, so going to Cardiff was really a treat for me as well. True, Torchwood usually sets its episodes in the city itself, so we don't get to see much of the beautiful areas, except for the Bay. But in 'Adrift' we get to see Flat Holm Island as well, which you can see on the last image in my picspam.:)