Wallabies in Wales

Seeing your national team play an away match while you are on the road is a big thrill. But to see the Wallabies playing in rugby-mad Wales, where an entire city comes out to party every time there is an international test, is a near-spiritual experience.

Wales rugby merchandise

Cardiff is just a two and a half hour train ride from London. When we boarded the 9am service from Paddington, the carriage was already full of Welsh rugby fans (or England supporters in disguise) lining their stomachs with cans of guinness and bloody marys in plastic cups - they had even remembered to bring along celery sticks!

Wales is somewhat of an underdog amongst the top tier nations of the rugby world, but it definitely wins full marks for having the most heart. The fiercely determined side showed this by nearly toppling France in the semi-final of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, losing by just a point but never once giving up hope - there was even an attempted shot at goal from the halfway line in the dying minutes of the match.

The fiercely proud Welsh, with their never-say-die attitude, are passionate about their history and culture and are fighting to protect their language. They are doing a fantastic job of it, with Wales officially a bilingual nation and one in five people speaking the Welsh language - a mean feat considering its difficult grammer and tongue-twisting pronunciation! 

And they are absolutely nuts about rugby. While it is almost impossible to find a pub in London that will put a rugby match on their tellie - they're permanently glued to football - rugby is the national sport in Wales. Cardiff comes to a standstill every time there is an international match played - its central streets are pedestrianised and the stadium is right in the centre of town, right by the bar and restaurant precinct. The result is mayhem - the city's narrow arteries are clogged with red and green clad rugby afficionados and every pub is packed to the gills.

The Welsh regimental mascot - a goat with silver tipped horns!

The Australia v Wales match wasn't part of any official tournament, and its outcome didn't actually have any bearing, but this didn't bother the Welsh. The pre-match build-up in Cardiff's millenium stadium pulled out all stops.

Nearly a whole quarter of the seating was taken up by choral singers from all over Wales, who performed traditional hymns in Welsh. Wales has a strong tradition of vocal performance, being dubbed the "land of the song" and is the home of the eisteddfod, a gaelic music and culture festival.

As their beloved starting team was announced, the crowd roared, and was nearly drowned out by vertical pillers of flames - presumably something to do with dragons - being lit around the edges of the stadium. The bellowing spectators weren't much interested in the particulars of the opposing team. The announcer even started introducing the players in reverse order, and didn't realise he had started at number 1 even though the pictures went from number 15, until he reached halfback Will Genia's name!

Fire breathers

There is one problem with seeing your team play an away game. It is very difficult to get excited when every time your team does something good, everyone else is silent or you have to contend with a chorus of exasperated sighs. We went to the match with a rugby-mad Welsh family, which are members of the Welsh Rugby Union, so you can imagine how many fellow Wallabies supporters were in the vicinity. It is quite eerie shouting out encouragement to your team when they score, only to be met with silence and the odd death stare.

The home side had a reasonably strong start, and by the end of first half either side could have come away with a victory. The Wallabies initially looked under pressure, and the crowd responded eagerly with constant singing and chanting. But their cries gradually faded as enthusiasm wore off, dawning on the fans that Wales would probably lose. When the Wallabies started a 21-point scoring streak early in the second half, the silence was deafening.

Wallaby pride in a sea of red

The Wallabies won 24-18, but Wales was not denied a fairytale ending when they scored right on the 80th minute - the never-say-die resolve intact. The try scorer was national hero Shane Williams, a winger playing his final match for Wales before retirement. If you didn't know the outcome, you wouldn't have guessed that Wales lost as thousands of rugby fans converged excitedly on central Cardiff, where thousands were already installed in pubs watching the match on TV.

On the obligatory post-match pub crawl, we called in at a number of establishments along Mary Street, the main drag in the entertainment precinct. All were incredibly crowded, stuffy and played terrible 1980s music. We eventually retired to Bridgend where our Welsh hosts live, half an hour from central Cardiff, and plonked ourself down in a bay window seat at the local boozer.

Our Wales weekender would not be complete without a drive around the rugged South Wales coastline. At the seaside town of Porthcawl, where miners would take their families to a company-built holiday resort or caravan park, surfers were dotted in the choppy breaks, even though it was December and the water temperature down to single figures.

The ruins of Ogmore castle on the river Ewenny

The area around nearby Ogmore beach is clustered with rolling sand dunes and is popular with horseriders who gracefully canter through on their steeds on their way to the open expanse of beach. This is the largest sand dune complex in the UK, and was used to film parts of Lawrence of Arabia. Unfortunately we didn't really get too close to the beach, being winter, and fat droplets of rain had started to fall. It was extremely cloudy so visibility was poor, although you could still see a vague strip of land across the Bristol Channel to Somerset county in England.

Other local landmarks we visited on our little adventure included the ruins of Ogmore castle, a Norman construction dating from about the 12th century. Perched on a flood-prone river bank, this sight is somewhat overshadowed by a path of enormous "stepping stones" that allow you to cross from one side of the river to the other. A stone bridge with round sheep-sized holes in it used to function as a sheep dipping station. Farmers would push the sheep through the holes and into the river below, stripping the sheep of lice and other nasties in their wool before they were sheared.

South Wales is incredibly green, thanks to the plentiful supply of rain, and this part of it boasts lush, arable farmland. Narrow country laneways are lined with ancient stone walls, many of them dry stone meaning they are just very strategically placed rocks with no mortar to join them. The village of Merthyr Mawr has a beautifully preserved collection of thatched cottages which once belonged to a large nearby estate and used to house the servants and other staff. The cottages are arranged around a village green, their thatched rooves fitting snugly over their windows.