Many of you have heard me talk about Newport, Wales a lot recently. However, to most of you Newport is nothing more than a nice sounding word, an anonymous and blank town half a world away. I have to confess that the same was true for me as well before I visited last November. I did have some experience with the UK before going, having spent a semester in Oxford four years ago. But I was reminded through my trip to Wales and Scotland that every part of the UK is a little bit different. Newport is not Oxford, nor is it Aberdeen for that matter (or London, as I was reminded of the other day). But it is a quite special and interesting place in and of its own right. If you'll indulge me a few paragraphs, I'd love to tell you a little about it (hopefully I'll be able to tell you more after living there for a while).
Newport isn't big by American standards, though it is the third largest city in Wales with 145,000 people. However, you shouldn't think it is a small, lonely town off by itself. Newport is part of the Cardiff Metro Area (Cardiff is the capital of Wales) which has about 860,000 people, so there are plenty of people within a short drive. Cardiff is a major center of culture, business, and government. There are major universities, the Welsh Assembly, and Millennium Stadium (home to the Welsh Rugby Union). So for people in North Carolina, Newport is kind of like the Cary to Raleigh (except with far fewer "relocated Yankees").
It is, however, much, much older than most American cities. It received its first charter in 1314 and has roots that run back almost to the Roman times. Newport has what's left of a Norman Castle, a nice quaint High Street (Main Street), and lots of old churches and buildings. It is surrounded by beautiful green, rolling hills, while the murky River Usk flows through the middle of it. As I've tried to describe my impressions to some people, I've told them that Newport is kind of what I would imagine a very small Pittsburgh to be like, surrounded by the rolling hills of Kentucky (though I've never visited said city). This
image is quite hard to reconcile with what most people think of when they imagine the UK. But most of us have a pretty limited view of what the UK is like exactly. Newport used to be a major steel manufacturing center and coal port. However, in the last half century it has lost much of this industry and is having to "reinvent" itself. From what I saw while there, they seem to be doing a pretty good job of it, building a brand new University campus along with new shops and malls. It is a bit of an odd combination though when you throw that together with ancient buildings and derelict steel mills. I'm still trying to get my mind around it.
Finally, here are a few more interesting things about Newport that I think are worth mentioning:
-Newport has its own professional rugby team called the Newport Gwent Dragons.
-All signs in Newport (as in all of Wales) are in English and Welsh, because there are still a number of
people who speak Welsh.
-The city is home to a large university called the University of Wales at Newport which has about 9,000 students.
-There is an old roman amphitheater nearby in the village of Caerleon (pronounced "Ca-lee-en") which once sat thousands of spectators.
-Newport recently played host to the Ryder Cup (2010), a tournament played by golfers from the USA and Europe who compete against each other in teams of two.
-Finally, there's a very peculiar bridge over the Usk leftover from the 1800's called a Transporter Bridge. It is very tall and lifts people on a large platform (connected to steel cables) across the river to the other side without blocking the path of ships traveling by (very interesting, but not very useful).
