A return to Welsh roots to sample cheese at its best

YOU can take the girl out of Wales but can you ever really take Wales out of the girl? When I was given the opportunity to go back to my roots and rediscover Cardiff, combined with a trip to The Great British Cheese Festival, I jumped at the chance.

I moved to Cardiff in 1999, when the city was undergoing a massive transformation.

In the two years I lived there, I saw the former docks area change massively, with new homes and flats being built at an amazing rate, so how would the city have changed in the years since I left?

The first indication of how great a change it had been was when I asked for directions to the newly-opened Radisson Hotel.

"It's opposite where the old ice rink used to be," I was told.

"So what's happened to the ice rink?" I asked.

Well, it's now the largest John Lewis outside London. In fact, the huge department store opened just the day before our visit, which gave the area around the hotel a real buzz.

The Radisson Hotel opened its doors in July and is truly impressive with spacious rooms, massive beds, flat screen TVs and beautifully-finished bathrooms with top-class power showers.

The only problem with city centre hotels is, inevitably, parking, so we ended up in an NCP 200 yards away, costing £8 per 24 hours.

As is often the way, in the two years I lived in Wales' capital – and for the five years I lived within an hour's drive – I never visited Cardiff Castle.

The castle is right in the city centre and has its origins in Norman times but is most commonly known as the home of the second Marquess of Bute, who was responsible for turning Cardiff into the world's greatest coal exporting port. The castle stayed in the hands of the Bute family until the death of the fourth Marquess, when it was given to the city of Cardiff.

As soon as you step through the gates into the castle's grounds it is easy to forget you are so close to the city centre as it's such a tranquil place, a perfect setting for The Great British Cheese Festival.

With around 400 British and Irish cheeses to taste, from Caerphilly to Red Leicester, goats' cheese, ewe and buffalo milk cheeses, blue cheeses and countless weird and wacky flavour combinations, it truly was a cheese-lover's delight.

After all that cheese sampling, we wandered back into the city centre to stroll around the Brewery Quarter with its buzzing restaurants and bars – another new addition since my day.

Nightlife in Cardiff really does have something for everyone with several theatres, the Millennium Centre, which was showing Madam Butterfly the weekend we were there, restaurants and countless bars.

The city centre does seem to have become a haven for stag and hen parties, several of which were held at the Radisson – although all credit to the hotel that we weren't disturbed at all.

Before heading home on the Sunday morning, I inflicted a trip down memory lane on my husband, visiting the streets I'd lived and the places I'd frequented.

Now the Welsh have a word which doesn't have a direct translation into English – hiraeth (pronounced heer-ayth), meaning a real longing or yearning for home.

And that trip back to Cardiff, revisiting old haunts and discovering the new bits, certainly left this Welsh girl with a real sense of hiraeth, while my husband, who'd never been to Cardiff before, had his appetite suitably whetted to agree to a return visit sometime in the near future.