Dad & dinosaurs

This weekend dad popped up for a visit. Mark was in Liverpool celebrating his birthday (abandoning me for cake). 

On Saturday we headed to Bute Park for a wee walk, stopping in the newest Brodie’s Coffee for some delicious cake. I’d slightly spontaneously bought us tickets for an Autumn Internationals (now called the Quilter Nations Series after a wealth management company but still sounding cute) rugby match: Wales vs Japan. We had fairly low expectations for the match but it turned out to be a brilliant one! Ending 24-23 to Wales, it was a nailbiter the whole way through. For dinner we enjoyed a scrummy Indian takeaway and watched the Dead Poets Society - I’d not seen it before but I can very much see why it’s a classic (despite falling asleep for about 20 minutes in the middle). 

On Sunday we again found some sweet treats, this time down at Brød in the bay. Dad has been keen to visit the dinosaur footprints in Penarth so we headed over, popping into the RNLI station there to find out a more. We had a lovely chat with a gentleman who has written a couple of leaflets on the footprints and their geologic history. He assured us (after we’d had the opposite assurance from the RNLI crew members standing outside) that despite it now not being low tide, we’d have enough time to walk there and back along the beach. We ummed and ahhed a bit, not wanting to risk getting caught out in the tide or going against RNLI advice, but given we could see the end of the sea wall where the footprints were was only a short distance away, we headed there. Apparently these footprints used to be thought as being formed by large rocks dropping into the ground rock when first found in 2009, but in 2021 some researchers confirmed that they were dinosaur footprints from the Triassic period. They used to have claws before they were worn away by erosion. The footprints were not very obvious, but you could see several in a row at places. Cool!