After a long ass drive from London to Pontypridd we arrived to the hotel at 11pm. Although we had informed the hotel of our late arrival we found the reception empty. After 10 mins of waiting I was ready to set the fire alarm off to get some attention. Seconds before I lit a match an employee appeared. An employee who was still very much chatting to another colleague in the back room. After a lukewarm check in we went to our room.
Whoever said that double beds are supposed to sleep two people is a total dick. They’re really not big enough for two people to sleep comfortably next to each other. For some reason the Heritage Park Hotel thought that a double bed was adequate for the £65 a night charge. The bed, not only small, was softer than a shower sponge and about as thin as one too. We had the two worst nights sleep we had ever had in a hotel.
The hotel has a pool, well actually more of a big bath. It was filled with kids and due to the small size of the pool there’s no where to escape the little buggers. The membership for the pool, gym and sauna is £37 a month. My bowel nearly fell out of my bottom when I heard that. The gym was one of those typical shit hotel gyms where nothing is digital and there’s no windows.
Pontypridd town centre
When I booked our little stay in Pontypridd, (or Ponty as the locals call it) I was expecting a sweet little Welsh village with streams, character and Welsh stuff. Well, Ponty does have a stream but there’s sod all character and the only Welsh stuff there is the people. Without being too judgemental, it does really say something when there’s 5 £1 pound shops in one rather small high street. There’s the essential W H Smith and a few other shops but a lot of places were closed down.
On the Saturday night we ventured out for some dinner. What a mistake. The Bertie Inn near our hotel, although had a very friendly owner didn’t have a chef on a Saturday. The only place we could find that did serve food on the 2nd busiest day of the week was an Italian called Trattoria. It was packed. Maybe the need to serve dinner in pubs on a Saturday isn’t a stupid one. The food was nice but they randomly turned off all of the lights to sing happy birthday to a child on the other side of the restaurant. Come on, everyone has a birthday, there’s no need for a total black out when I’m half way through my calamari.
The Nightlife
After food we went out to enjoy Ponty’s night life. Wow, what an assault on the senses that was. I haven’t been stuck to the floor of a bar for a good while. We started off at the Wetherspoons where they had a dance floor ( I didn’t know this existed), the place was filled with very young people with very little clothes on. Seriously, I wear more to the bed than some of these people. We then ventured to a few other bars including the Skinny Dog and after 10 minutes I realised that my clubbing days are over.
Here’s why my clubbing days are over:
- Everyone is a dick when out clubbing, including me
- You have to shove people violently out of the way to get to the toilet
- Women in the toilets don’t actually want to use the toilet – they do their make up, giggle and start twerking randomly
- I would rather have been in a pub with a few proper lagers (not washed down rubbish) watching the boxing that was on the TV
On our way out of the Skinny Dog a skinny 18 year old club promoter came up and tried to persuade us to go into another club. He told us that he was going to study Drama in Glasgow. He said he was going to ‘Cause some trouble in Glasgow’ before sticking his tongue out and giving us a cheeky wink. Nah mate, you’re going to die in Glasgow. And with that we went to Tesco to stock up on chocolate and jumped in a taxi back to the hotel.
Pontypridd’s Miners
Pontypridd is very much a miners town and this is reflected strongly in the cute little museum and gallery located next to the old bridge. This old church is filled with paintings downstairs and miners and war objects upstairs. Oh and there’s a signed picture of Tom Jones. Next to our hotel is the Rhondda mining museum that takes you underground to see what it was like being a miner back in the day.
Opposite the miners museum is a social club filled with ex-miners. What I’m trying to say is that everyone was a miner here, their dad was a miner, their granddad, his cat, his uncle and his nephew were all miners. As much as I dislike Thatcher the people of Ponty must fucking hate her. Naturally.
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