Introducing the Great Welsh Bus Pass Sketchcrawl

One of the joys of getting older and turning 60 is that I’ve received my Transport for Wales Bus Pass. Any bus, any route, any time, within Wales. Bloody marvellous – thought I at the time and now, a few weeks later, I still do.

So, I’ve had this idea in my head now about seeing just how many good sketching sights I can visit using my pass. This idea I have rather grandiosely titled The Great Welsh Bus Pass Sketchcrawl.

The Great Welsh Bus Pass Sketchcrawl:1 Cardiff – Statue of Sir Gareth Edwards – St. David’s Shopping Centre, Cardiff.

If in doubt, Cardiff’s a good shout. I live in Port Talbot which is just over 30 miles away a you can usually do the trip by car from front door to parked car in about forty minutes. From the bus stop 20 years from my front door the journey took two buses – the X1 to Bridgend bus station followed by the X2 from Bridgend bus station to Cardiff. This combined journey took two hours. Now that’s not a huge issue when you have the time to do it. But it does suggest there’s going to need to be some degree of planning when I want to start going beyond my M4 corridor hinterland. That’s a bridge to cross when I get to it, though.

So I set off at 8:14 and arrived in Cardiff 2 hours later. By the time I got there it was drizzling. It’s one thing sketching in drizzle when you know there’s a good chance you may never come back to the place you’re trying to sketch. When you know that you are only two free bus rides away though it’s a different kettle of pysgod (Welsh for fish). A great choice would have been to pop into the National Museum of Wales – a fantastic art gallery and it has beautiful sculptures to sketch. That is, it would have been a great choice if the Museum was not ar gau on Mondays.

Well, my heart was set on sculpture, and I knew where there was a statue I’ve meant to sketch in the past but somehow never got round to. The St. David’s Shopping Centre is the biggest in Cardiff with over 150 shops. For the last 42 years it’s also been home to a statue of 1 of my heroes. As a lad growing up in the 70s, and very keen on rugby, Gareth Edwards – now Sir Gareth – was just about the complete player to me and there was only one way he could have been better to my point of view. I wish he’d played for England and not Wales. Mind you, he’d probably never have won the fifty three consecutive caps that he did if he'd been English – the so called ‘old farts’ in charge of England always seemed suspicious of such talent.

Sir Gareth, who was a brilliant schoolboy athlete and footballer as well as a rugby player, spent his club career playing for Cardiff, and also won caps playing in tests for the Lions in 68, 71 and 74.

As I said, the statue was put up in 1982, just a few years before I moved to Wales. It was made by sculptor Bonar Dunlop, about whom I am sad to say I know nothing other than he made this statue. It’s a good likeness too – I recognised who it was straightaway the first time I ever saw it.

With the sketch completed and a two hour journey home ahead of me I called it a day. Every journey has to start with a single step, they do say.