Mike Packwood

I've driven up and down Cathedral Road hundreds of times without ever stopping to take a proper look around. With its mix of Edwardian Villas and nearer town, relatively modern office blocks, this was always (and probably still is) one of Cardiff's most opulent thoroughfares leading from the city to Pontcana and Llandaff Cathedral. Its still the go-to street if you're visiting and looking for a small hotel. As usual I took the opportunity to seek out any interesting vehicles on the way and so today you'll see a Silver Shadow, an original mini and surprise, a Corvette.    

Cardiff Bay's collection of fabulous commercial buildings, including the Coal Exchange - now sadly under threat  - where the worlds first £1,000,000 cheque was written...and latterly where some scenes from Sherlock were filmed.

________________________________________ I've driven past the West Lee apartment building in Cardiff hundreds of times without stopping to take a look. Now that I have, I'm not sure whether I think its a perfect example of its time and place, or just plain hideous. Its difficult to know where the architect was coming from on this one - not necessarily because of its ugliness - being built from unflattering dark brown brick doesn't help -  but simply because its difficult to see properly from any direction. Hemmed into quite a small plot between Victorian housing, a filling station and a Unite Union office block you cant get far enough away to see it as it was probably intended to be seen, and for me, for that reason alone, it just doesn't work.

A few pictures of Cardiff's magnificent Millennium stadium - taken from the Penarth side of the bay, plus a couple from the game vs Argentina in 2014. From an architectural point of view - if you're interested in why one end of the stadium doesn't look finished, the answer is at the bottom of the page. Pic left .The seats on the left here - at what is now one end of the ground  rest on the remaining part of the old stadium, which in turn still supports the Arms Park stadium roof next door. The Old National Stadium This is what the old National stadium used to look like. It used to run East/West and the new one has been turned 90 degrees and now faces North/South. You can see in the top picture that the old stadium supported the roof of the Arms Park, (home of Cardiff Blues). The reason the new stadium isn't finished as a complete bowl is that one end of the new one still supports th...