Cooch's Six Nations Guide - Wales

Anyone seen Gavin Henson?

In the run up to the 2010 Six Nations we have been touring round the venues and cities hosting the games and chatting to former British & Irish Lions and England prop, and Gullivers spokesperson, Gareth 'Cooch' Chilcott. Gareth knows one or two things about rugby tours and gives us the low down on his recommendations on where you should head for all the fun. The final part in our series of guides focuses on the non stop party that is Cardiff...

If there was ever a town that was built to entertain 80,000 rugby fans it was Cardiff. The city has more places to drink than it does web-toed visitors from the valleys..

Cardiff is a true rugby city and on international weekends the city centre is awash with red and green, and you can hardly move for the see of red dragons being waved around.

With a Welsh father Gareth Chilcott has fond memories of visiting Cardiff: “Now that the Millennium Stadium s built, ten years ago, it’s fantastic you walk out of the stadium and the first thing you come to is a bar, or a hotel with a bar, or a restaurant with a bar!”

With 75,000 seats the stadium I a fortress for Wales, especially in recent season and saw them win the 2008 Grand Slam, the whole country is rugby mad and has it drilled into them from a young age, even if the Welsh fans didn’t manage to get a ticket you know they’ve been watching as soon as you get back into town.

Even without the rugby Cardiff is a city worth visiting for a night out. It is known as ‘the Tenerife of the UK’ (only by this reporter probably) because the amount of bars and clubs on a single street. Women in extremely tight clothing and very handsome men offer you deals to get in to their club and are not scared of letting big groups of men in together, so if you’ve got you entire club with you, you’ll all be able to get in the same place and drink brightly coloured alcohol for very little money. If you want somewhere a little more peaceful there is quieter, but not too quiet, restaurants and bars away from the main drag, such as Tigertiger, a restaurant that turns into a club – again they welcome big groups but it might be wise to get yourself on the guest list before you head out.

But best of all there’s the world famous Kebab Alley. This ‘hidden gem’ is a road about 100 yards long and is filled with kabab shops, fish and chips, pizza and anything else you might need – the local delicacy is chicken curry and chips. Which is chicken donner meat with curry sauce on top – bon appetite!

Tickets haven’t been released yet, but you can register at the Welsh Rugby Union website.

2010 Six Nations games in Wales
Wales v Scotland - Sat 13th Feb 2010
Wales v France - Fri 26th Feb 2010
Wales v Italy - Sat 20th Mar 2010