Art is more than life.

8.00 am. The final field trip to St Fagan’s and the city chapels, Cardiff. A Lewis’s coach was, as ever, our horse and carriage. We were driven through an overcast, chill, landscape, and pockets of fog, which began to burn away only as we left Port Talbot. I miss the site/sight of industry; I miss South Wales. With some direction from Bob, the driver pulled into the bus park at St Fagan’s around 10.30 am. Much has changed in the intervening two years. The entrance to the museum is being demolished, and new transplants of buildings, planned. My group took the track up to Capel Penrhiw (converted c.1707) — which changes not:

From there, via the row of miner’s cottages (time travel by terrace), we walked to Llandeilo Church, the 13th-century Norman church:

It’s an  impressive reconstruction, but one that never fully persuades me. Thereafter, I cut the students lose, so that they could do the more important work of discovering things for themselves.

12.45 pm. Lunch on a bench. The sun shines; the day is therapeutic. 1.30 pm. Onto the bus and on to Cardiff city centre. The group and I walked to the Hayes to see the resplendent Tabernacle chapel (enlarged 1840):

Then, we turned on our heels and headed for the extraordinary Bethany: a chapel within a department store:

I’ve seen its façade many times before, but it never fails to surprise and satisfy. One space seeps into another as each building incorporates the other. In some respects it’s a more rewarding experience than Llandeilo Church. 2.45 pm. Again, I cut lose the students to shop and return to the National Museum Cardiff, where we alighted. For my part, I gravitated towards the Central Market. In my student days at Newport, I’d make a trip here just to east the faggots and peas. The shop is till there at the rear of the gallery. But now it serves biryani and chicken curry instead. In most other respects, the place hasn’t changed:

4.15 pm. I took refuge from the sun beside the circle of standing stones at Cathay’s Park (which I recall drawing in the early 1980s while waiting for something or someone. (That, I don’t recall.)):

The remainder of the afternoon was spent in the museum’s galleries. I’d forgotten just how good the modern and contemporary collections are. We left Cardiff at 5.00 pm, arriving home around 7.40 pm.