Hay-on-Wye is a town of bookstores. Full of them. Notorious for them, even. That was our end goal; going book hunting in a town of bookstores is like Christmas for a bunch of book nerds.
En route to Hay, we stopped in a town which I believe is called Rhayader, so we could feed one of the party who had neglected to eat breakfast before our early morning (supposed to be at 8.30 but more like 8.45) departure from Aberystwyth. We went into a tea shop and had... coffee and tea, and some of us had food.
Rhayader has a lovely clock tower in the centre of town, right in front of the tea house we went to.
And it has a pretty river running through!
On to Hay. Hay-on-Wye, as you might infer from the name, is on the river Wye. It's just on the Welsh side of the border between Powys, Wales, and Herefordshire, England. It dates back at least to the time of the Normans in England; its castle was a Norman structure.
The remains of the castle
In the 1970s, a man named Richard Booth declared himself to be the king of Hay-on-Wye. Fortunately, no one took him seriously (except the tourism industry - all sorts of things are made of this there!), because (as our group discussed) this is a rather treasonous thing to do. The queen doesn't like parts of her territory declaring themselves independent, you see. Regardless of legality, Hay has since enjoyed a bit of infamy which has greatly boosted their local economy. They have somewhere over 30 book shops, according to Wikipedia, both with and without specialties. There was one devoted entirely to murder mysteries, even! Bibliophile's paradise. We decided collectively that our favourite was the one that had a surprisingly good Celtic linguistics section. Mmmmm, philology.
Hay's clocktower
In addition to bookstores, there are all sorts of other places. I found a really neat stores that had lots of wool yarns and other crafty products. We all sat down for a pint at lunch in the local pub, which had a delightful selection of hard ciders on draught that I was able to choose from (and so did the other girl in the group.), all with silly names (something about a crazy dog, and one called orgasmic that, while tasty, did not live up to its name).
Welsh countryside - lots of sheep
It's about a two-hour drive through the beautiful, twisty Welsh countryside from here to Hay, and it was a picturesque drive home, filled with singing and discussion of linguistics.
Have I mentioned how much I'm enjoying life here?
In other news, I have acquired a rental ("hire") harp. It is nice and has lovely sound, but I miss mine own harp, and hope to bring it with me when I come back after Christmas. Unfortunately, I've been so busy between classes and being out and about that I haven't had much time to practice, and my first lesson here is tomorrow. Eep!
Cheers!
