Iniitial blog posts

content/blog/day13.md

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+---
+title: 'Day 13: Crickhowell to Swindon'
+date: 2013-06-20T15:03:23+02:00
+Tags: []
+Categories: []
+---
+
+## The Big Pit
+
+Waking up in our separate Dragon Inn hotel rooms in Crickhowell is less of a silent blessing than we may have hoped. The snoring or
+showering noises are replaced with the clattering of another downpour and the local traffic. As agreed, we're in the hotel restaurant at
+8:30 for some breakfast. I sample the traditional Welsh breakfast (which includes 'laver bread' and 'glamorgan sausage') and Pim has the
+traditional British breakfast (with black pudding).
+
+Over breakfast we discuss today's plans. First up is Big Pit, an old mine that is no longer actively being mined but is still in use and is
+open to visitors. After that, we'll head down to Cardiff to see what the capitol of the Principality of Wales has to offer. We thank our
+friendly Portuguese innkeeper Pedro, check out and are on our way. It's a short (and cloudy) drive to the mine; within half an hour we're in
+Blaenafon parking our car at the Pit. One nice aspect of this particular trip is the cost: entrance to the mine is free of charge.
+
+An old miner, Peter, takes us down in the "cage" (what miners call the lift or elevator) and tells us all about life in the mines. From his
+own experience (with more modern equipment and better working conditions) and from his ancestors' experiences. Amazing how poorly workers
+(children aged 5 and up) were treated (exploited) as little as one hundred years ago!
+
+After our short stint in the mine we come back up to the surface and survey the rest of the Pit. There's a bunch of canaries at this
+coalmine, we visit the explosives warehouse (sadly, none were left) and generally scope the area. Time to leave for Cardiff.
+
+Cardiff, too, is pretty close by. Of course, we're pretty hungry again so we find a place to have some lunch and then walk around the city a
+bit. There's another castle, surprisingly called 'Cardiff Castle', but entry is 11 pounds and we've been pretty much castled out by now. To
+prevent overdosing on castles, we decide to skip this one and instead visit Bute park next to it. In the end, Cardiff doesn't really do it
+for us so we get back into the car and get going again. We cross the bridge over the Severn river and we're back in England. Within less
+than 90 minutes, we get to Swindon where we rest our wary legs in another Campanile hotel and spend some time writing blogposts.
+
+**Posted by Paul de Weerd at 11:29 AM**
+
+## The Magic Roundabout
+
+Have you ever heard of the Magic Roundabout in Swindon? I have, as it is often on display at the Google office lobby, where there's a
+looping Earth presentation where it takes you to strange places on the globe. Kind of cool - and that's where I picked up the 'Swindon Magic
+Roundabout'. It is a very confusing place, to quote the Source Of All Truth Wikipedia:
+
+In 2005, it was voted the worst roundabout in a survey by a UK insurance company.[4] In September 2007, the Magic Roundabout was named as
+one of the World's Worst Junctions by a UK motoring magazine.[5] In December 2007, BBC News reported a survey identifying The Magic
+Roundabout as one of the "10 Scariest Junctions in the United Kingdom".[6]However the roundabout provides a better throughput of traffic
+than other designs and has an excellent safety record, since traffic moves too slowly to do serious damage in the event of a collision.[7]
+
+Well well well then. WE'RE THERE, DUDE!!!!1
+
+So, after dinner tonight (in a somewhat sketchy italian joint called Fratello's - the food was not bad but just.. not... good... enough),
+Paul and I decided that it would be absolutely fan-fucking-tastic to crash the Merc on the Magic Roundabout, and I had purposefully avoided
+drinking any alcohol to make it even more likely that I would freak out on the pavement.
+
+With great deliberation, we turned on the GPS logger for this wonderful journey over the Swindon roads. We also took pictures, made film,
+and have the dashboard cam files saved [for future uploading to Youtube, I am now typing this on a 3G tethered Android, perhaps not the best
+use of our data plan :-]. But I will show you this:
+
+{{< image src="/img/swindon.png" width="600px" >}}
+
+Absolute hilarity ensued as we boldly entered with our Swiss plated, right-hand-side driverseat vehicle, because honestly - if the Brits
+vote this the scary-shit, how could we NOT drive on this beautifully architected street? Proudly, I first gave it a go, entering from the
+NorthWest, driving all sorts of clockwise and counter-clockwise directions, only slamming the brakes once after finding that I was more than
+entirely disoriented and generally not knowing what the hell I was doing. Then I drove off to the NorthEastern corner and gave Paul a go.
+He, too, had fun consistently scanning all around "look left? look right? Damnit, just look in ALL THE DIRECTIONS!" and making his way
+around the small roundabouts in the big roundabout in a rather roundabout fashion. We giggled like school girls. Oh boy, so much fun we had.
+Then I dropped Paul off and he decided to commit this act of driving to film. He took out his Android, started filming while I went over the
+northern loop, and just as I was about to go into the southern loop, a cop car drove past me and ogled me, with a grin on his face of the
+sorts "don't screw around here, son", so I quickly bolted off of the roundaroundaroundaroundaboutaboutabout (what's all this about?) and we
+called it a day.
+
+Swindon, we love you. You make roadtrippers happy!!
+
+**Posted by Pim van Pelt at 2:54 PM **