Travel Series
Chasing The Doctor in Cardiff
Time travel in the Welsh capital.
Reading the below piece by Sharing Randomly immediately took me back to my 21st birthday. While Sharing describes the breath-taking landscapes of New Zealand, I was reminded of my media-based pilgrimage to Cardiff, Wales. The home of the BBC studios which filmed the British Sci-Fi series Doctor Who.
My friends and I were obsessed with the show, and its spin-off Torchwood. So much so that my friend drove us from Ormskirk, where she went to university, to Cardiff. We listened to Trock music (Time Lord Rock) all the way. We stayed in a hostel, paying £30 each to secure a private room for the three of us, with an en-suite bathroom.
During the day we toured the city using a map we’d printed off the Internet. This was 2011. I had just got my first iPhone for a birthday present and there was not yet 4G. We visited a playground where “Bad Wolf” had been sprayed on a wall, paid our respects at Ianto’s Shrine, and of course, snapped pictures in front of the supposed Torchwood hub entrance at Mermaid Quay.
There used to be a Doctor Who exhibition in Cardiff, where they displayed props from the show. This took up a half-day of our visit and we went round twice. The highlight of this was the famous coat, worn by David Tennant’s 10th Doctor. Displayed on a mannequin with a sign that said: “do not touch”. For giddy 21-year-olds this was a sight worth seeing close up. We took care to adhere to the sign’s instructions, while slowly edging closer to take a sniff. David Tennant’s coat smelled musty.
A friend who later visited the experience reported back that that famous coat was now behind glass.
The unexpected peak of the trip came several months later. Gathered around a small TV in a student lounge, watching the latest episode. Matt Smith as The Doctor visits America. The Doctor and his faithful companion visit an “All American” diner. We collectively spit out our drinks. That’s not America at all, but an American-style diner in Cardiff where we had stopped for lunch.
Would I go back to Cardiff now? Probably not. The show has lost a lot of its spark in the past 10 or so years. I now live in Manchester city centre though and do enjoy seeing parts of my city standing in for the early days of New York or London in shows like The Crown and Peaky Blinders.
Have you ever visited a movie or TV location? Feel free to post a comment, or take up the prompt and write your own piece. Make sure to tag me, I’d love to give it a read!
