In the sequel to the hugely popular Real Cardiff, Peter Finch explores the city further. In Real Cardiff Two: the Greater City he no longer has his nose pressed against the glass. This time he’s inside. Finch hunts for the legendary peripherique and discovers rubbish dumps, walled housing estates and dead-end lanes. He walks the coast around Penarth Head and on to Lavernock to find the terminal beach at Sully. With poet Grahame Davies he hunts for the mythical river Canna and uncovers what makes Cardiff Pontcanna media-land tick. With Architect Jonathan Adams he trails where the walls of Cardiff once ran, looking for time vaults and gaps in the city's space-time continuum.

How did Penarth's Billy Banks get their name? Why are there so many pubs in Pontcanna? Is it Victoria Park or Canton? Who knows? Not Finch's mother, that's for sure. With John Briggs he walks the route of the Glamorgan Canal, mourning the city's loss.

In Roath, the real capital of Wales, he finds the Goosler, lost tennis courts and the old road to Cardiff Gate. In the Bay he looks at what went before the new Wales Millennium Centre and what might have been. Out at Creigiau he finds cromlechau and extant past in a city full of trees and slopes. The Welsh Office is surrounded with salt to keep the demons out. John Tripp has his wake at the Gower in Cathays. There's a folk-club in the Locomotive along Broadway. Queen Street Station has passages you can't get to where the Taff Valley Railway still steams. There are other secrets running inside the overbuilt city. Finch tells us what they are.