Cardiff

Rob's stag do was pretty decent. The journey there was a bit of a drag though. It was supposed to be a direct train journey from Rhyl to Cardiff, but engineering works on the line meant that we had to get a bus from Shrewsbury to Hereford. This took a lot longer than we thought as the only road seems to be a narrow, twisty thing which would be tricky in a car, let alone a hulking bus. This combined with heat and a psycho bus driver led to a rather worrying journey. He had problems spotting roundabouts until he was nearly on top of them, which then resulted in the slamming on of the digital brakes. We called them that as they only seemed to have two states, on and off, which was quite worrying, especially as he also had problems stopping when the traffic in front had stopped. Also the gearbox made horrible noises.

Anyway, we arrived in Cardiff and the pub crawl began after we dumped our stuff in the hotel room. First though, food was required. Rob wanted to eat at a Chiquito Mexican restaurant, but there was a ludicrous wait, so this plan was scrapped. Most of us got chips from a place called 'The Chippy'. They had battered Turkey kebabs behind the counter, so I tried one. It was really, really nice too.

After that, we hit several pubs, drank a lot and basically enjoyed the rather active Cardiff nightlife. The one place that did stand out was The Goat Major, which is right next to Cardiff Castle. That was fun. The night ended in a place which had music so loud the speakers couldn't cope and so it was distorted horribly. As if 2 Unlimited wasn't bad enough already. Ed and I really don't go for that sort of thing so we sat at a table with hands over our ears, having a conversation by typing notes on our mobile phones and showing them to each other while everyone else had fun on the dance floor. The only entertainment there was some guy who was so self-obsessed, he'd start to dance, and then stop and admire himself in the mirror.

After that place, everyone kind of split up a bit and went back to the hotel in groups. The Travelodge was right on one of the main roads and above a club, and so there were LOADS of people outside and it was really noisy. Still slept OK though.

The train journey back was uneventful, and rather dull on the whole. But all in all it was a good night out and Rob said he had a brilliant time, which is all that matters.