Fade To Grey

Travel Guide

Two cities aptly evoked -Real heart and soul in these places (in addition to the fictional crimes)

Cardiff

“It was quite a view(Gethin) had from the kitchen window. Look left and you could see the valleys stretching away to the north towards Merthyr. At the foot of the valley, cars were starting to file down the main road towards Cardiff. Look to the right and you could see the city itself; the castle tower, the spire of John’s Church, the massive struts of the Millennium Stadium and beyond all that the Bay and the great grey bulk of the Barrage that had turned Cardiff’s tidal estuary into a boating lake.”

Coal Exchange

“The Coal exchange, in the heart of the old Cardiff docklands, was a grand but faded relic of the time when the city was the globe’s busiest port. Apparently the first ever million-pound cheque had been written on its trading floor. For a while, it had been used as a music venue – Gethin had seen both Van Morrison and Patti Smith play there.”

Mischiefs Cafe Bar

“Mischiefs Cafe Bar was one of the  few ungentrified hangouts left in Cardiff Bay. For donkey’s years it had been called the Ship and Pilot. Shirley Bassey used to sing in the back room when she was fourteen.”

Gwaelod-y-garth

“Gwaelod-y-garth, sat high up on the side of the great wide valley that leads north of Cardiff. One upon A time, it had been home to the better-off-peope who made their livings from the coal mine that used to line the valley floor.” This is where Gethin lives, on the slope, “in a particularly precarious setting.”

Bristol

Much of the investigation takes place here and the threads keep on coming. The city comes alive with a creative edge as well as the fictional crime fiction one…

Beer Barge

A popular hangout in Bristol and in the book as Bex once did a show on it, where she was one of the backing singers in a group called The Inhuman league.

Clifton Suspension Bridge

“Twenty minutes later, they were driving along the Avon Gorge into Bristol, Brunel’s great Suspension Bridge looming above them. It was just along this road that Hannah Gold had been seen on camera from the last itme as a living person.”

Stokes Croft

The alternative side of Bristol where the investigation leads.

“Stokes Croft was the epicentre of alternative Bristol, half the buildings covered in more of less artistic graffiti and street art, and there were more artfully disetressed bars and began cafes than you could shake a stick at, interspersed with the odd dodgy massage parlour left over from the street’s recent past as a red-light district” There’s even a Banksy in the area!