The Town of Books - Hay-on-Wye

If you know anything about literary festivals, or cultural festivals generally, then you will have heard of Hay-on-Wye, which is a small town on high ground overlooking the River Wye, upstream from Hereford. It is a Mecca for book-lovers, being renowned for its many bookshops, which offer books old and new, some shops specialising in a certain genre only. It is the acknowledged bookshop capital of the entire country, and is known as The Town of Books.

And yet it isn't in England. The name suggests that the town is English, albeit clearly on a river that forms the Welsh Border here and there in this general region. But Hay is in fact in Wales, though only just. It has a Welsh name, Y Gelli Gandryll, which my rough knowledge of Welsh tells me means 'The Devastated Wood'. It's odd that it isn't actually named Y Gaer Gandryll, meaning 'The Ruined Castle', for there is just such a castle overlooking the town:

Here are less fanciful photos of it:

Castles are thick on the ground all along the Welsh Border, from north to south. In turbulent times they were an essential refuge; often they were strategic strongholds from which the Border could be watched and raids mounted. Hay isn't at all unusual for having one.

As soon as you leave the town going eastwards you enter England. It's that close. So the place has a hybrid feel, a cross-border culture, and is not like the places deeper into Wales, less influenced by English ways and English laws. This diluted Welshness is accentuated because of the famous Hay Festival, held every year in early summer - a music and philosophy gathering, as well as a magnet for book-lovers - which creates an international atmosphere that lingers on for the rest of the year. The town actually has links with Timbuktu in Mali, West Africa. A plaque in the main car park proudly says so:

How these two places twinned together is a mystery! I'm guessing that a West African author was a guest at the literary festival sometime since it began nearly thirty years ago, and his or her influence created the connection. Or possibly it was a West African musician or band. Be that as it may, a carefully-chosen delegation of local Hay councillors must fly off to Timbuktu each year - braving the swords of the savage Tuareg - to keep the twin towns' mutual regard simmering. And, similarly, a carefully-chosen delegation of Timbuktu elders must arrive at Hay each year - braving the savage loss of their baggage at London Heathrow, and the risk of catching a cold - to maintain this presumably fertile cross-cultural symbiosis.

Hay and Timbuktu...so far as I am aware, Newhaven is the only Sussex town to boast an equally remarkable exotic link. Newhaven celebrates a connection with Ho Chi Minh. (See my post Ho Chi Minh on 29th July 2014)

I didn't know about the Timbuktu connection (nor much else about the town) when I visited Hay on a cool and largely sunless afternoon in late October. I'd seen the Mappa Mundi at Hereford in the morning, and had then studied the map (the Ordnance Survey map, I mean, not the Mappa Mundi!) to find out what I could fit in before sunset. Ah, I said to myself, I could do three things. First: inspect a prehistorical burial chamber called Arthur's Stone, high up in the hills north-west of Hereford. Second: visit Hay. Then third: coax Fiona over the high and exposed Gospel Pass in the Black Mountains, which would take me past Llanthony Priory on the other side.

Arthur's Stone was on a minor road, and not very easy to find. It was very much a leap of faith to whizz Fiona ever upwards along twisting lanes with blind corners, trusting that no car or tractor was coming the other way. We survived. It was worth the effort. Sort of. Some burial chambers are just a pile of old stones, but this one (though it had completely lost its original covering of earth) was more complete than most, and featured a very large capstone supported by smaller ones. A bit like some of the Cornish quoits:

I was rapidly sated. I soon left the misty uplands to cruise down into Hay.

Frankly, the town was a little disappointing. I wasn't coming to it in the best of weather, nor during the busy and vibrant Festival, when it might be expected to be buzzing. To be sure, the large - overlarge - car park was bursting with cars, implying that the town, even in late October, might be seething with visitors. But something told me they would be casual afternoon tourists, and not serious bibliophiles. It didn't help that tackiness in the form of luridly-painted gift shops hit you even before you got far from the unromantic car park. Study this shot, for example:

But I persevered. And in truth the centre of the town, when I reached it, did have streets lined with an unusual number of proper bookshops - of the kind I'd been hoping for. But where were the crowds?

The shop in the picture just above specialised in crime fiction, and was stuffed with books about murder and sleuthing. Another (below) had many books on Scotland, especially the Loch Ness Monster:

I went into several bookshops to browse, but failed to see anything to part me from the pennies in my purse. And the crowds, wherever they were, were not in the shops, thumbing through the books on the shelves. There was no frenzy anywhere. You could hardly say there was any atmosphere at all.

I was however much interested in capturing the mood and character of the town in pictures, and despite the dull weather, I think I got its measure. This was no Portmeirion, but there were still plenty of architectural subjects.

The town centre, surely the main focal point at Festival-time, was in fact quite small in extent, and consisted of a tight maze of narrow streets, some pedestrianised, some not. Crowded, these streets would of course come alive. As it was, it all felt terribly end-of-season. You'll have noticed that restaurants, upmarket gift shops, country clothing shops, and posh provision shops abounded. Perhaps most of the visitors were in those?

The best view I found in Hay was down at the river. The Wye looked pretty good from the road bridge.

The road bridge had these unusual stumps at the edge of the footway, clearly designed to trip up pedestrians and make them take a header into the oncoming traffic:

They were of course meant to deter parking on the bridge, double yellow lines not being sufficient. At the town end of the bridge was this bilingual Welsh-English advertisement for an investment in wind farming, which was one of the few things I saw that reminded me of Hay's geographical position inside Wales:

I came here partly to see what all the fuss was about, why so many people speak of Hay-on-Wye in tones of deep respect and awe, and rave about the Festival. I'd attended the Appledore Book Festival in North Devon since 2012, and had found it very enjoyable. So I was curious to know what extra things Hay had, that made it the book festival to go to.

But frankly I couldn't see them. Yes, Hay had a pleasant riverside location; it had more places to eat than Appledore had, and a much larger car park; probably it had more places to stay; and it might well possess more suitable places to hear speakers, attend workshops, and enjoy other kinds of event. It certainly had an abnormal number of good bookshops, whereas Appledore now had none at all. And yet, to my own mind, Hay lacked charm. It was not especially picturesque. And it certainly didn't have the invigorating sea air that Appledore enjoyed.

I entered these five pictures below for a photo competition earlier this year, run by the Appledore Visitor Association. They will have chosen the winner by now. I'm afraid that no congratulatory email has come - my entries were just not good enough. But I still think they showed scenes perfectly characteristic of Appledore, exactly the kind of thing any visitor to the the Appledore Book Festival would see. Hay has nothing like this:

Perhaps I am being unfair, comparing sunny summer shots with cloudy late autumn ones, a maritime location with an inland one, and Appledore's two-week event with Hay's year-round programme of cultural happenings. But I don't think I'll be making a special effort to visit Hay again, not unless I'm already in the area and there's a particular book I want to find.

A sunny day on a surfing beach

It's just been lashing down with rain again outside, and it's a typical dull and damp November day. I've been keeping some posts in reserve for days like this, all about fine-weather holiday events during the last couple of months, that can add cheer to a sunless and chilly late-autumn day. Here's one of them.

It's 3rd October, and I'm still in North Devon. My friend Rheya texts me, saying that she's popped down to Putsborough from Sussex, and is offering a meetup.

I'm delighted to hear from her, and jump at this opportunity. I had of course met up many times in the past with friends while on holiday. But it had always been the friends who lived at a distance, in Gloucestershire, the Lake District, Scotland and occasionally elsewhere. Although the notion of meeting up with a 'local' Sussex friend - I'm thinking particularly of Alice, who has a campervan - had often been floated, nothing ever come of it. But now, for the first time ever, I had Rheya nearby (well, an hour away from the farm) and the deed could be done. And it was a dazzlingly sunny day, and mild, the last gasp of summer, even though a little breezy too.

We agreed to meet at Putsborough at 11.30am. I drove over in Fiona, cutting across-country via Georgham from Braunton, and encountered Rheya walking up from the bay, where she had already got in a few hours' surfing that very morning. She piled in, and our route took us into Croyde Bay, then round the point below Saunton Down, with Saunton Sands coming into view. We briefly stopped above the Sands, and admired the panorama. It looked liked this. Those people down there were just tiny specks on the wide expanse of wet sand:

Here are two location maps to click on:

Putsborough is at the southern end of Morte Bay in the upper map. Saunton, our destination, is near the top edge of the lower map, with the vast Saunton Sands stretching southwards towards the mouth of the Taw and Torridge rivers, Appledore being just off the bottom edge. The first locality for my birding afternoon with Vicky (mentioned in a recent post) is in the bottom right corner of the lower map. That's where we saw the pelican. I should perhaps mention that birding is one of Rheya's interests as well.

So here we are, about to park at Saunton:

And here's Rheya, standing in the car park, and looking completely natural...

...although some people always have to pose:

24mm lenses have a steep perspective, close-up objects seeming much larger than they really are, but this shot seems ridiculous. Fiona isn't nearly so big:

It was almost noon. We decided to eat straight away, then walk on the sands afterwards. There was a smart beach restaurant/café right there, called the Beachside Grill. It had a sunny and airy outside upper deck, so we grabbed a table there. From that deck one had a great view out to sea, and also up to the famous white-painted Art-Deco Saunton Sands Hotel which overlooked the Sands:

Mind you, the interior of the restaurant/café was very pleasant and sunny too:

But why stay indoors on such a fabulous day, when you can eat al fresco?

Considering the upmarket ambience, we wondered whether there were any connection between the Beachside Grill (and its collection of smart shops on the ground floor) and the posh Saunton Sands Hotel above. And in fact there was - see the Hotel website at https://sauntonsands.co.uk/ and click on 'Dining'. In any event, we readily found several nice things to consider on the lunch menu. Here's me, menus in hand:

This is what we both ordered. Just a burger. Simple peasant fare, rudely served on slate platters - rustic and unsophisticated, the kind of thing Devon fisher-folk and farm labourers of yore might have eaten while waiting for the surf to get up.

Now that I'm into my Slimming World regime, I'd probably have to forgo half the brioche, but the burger, chips and salad wouldn't be synful, although the salad dressing definitely would be on the naughty side.

And here we both are, about to tuck in, a shot taken by the young, beautiful and very obliging waitress, who was doubtless a rising starlet in her free hours:

Note the ruffled hair - it was pretty breezy! And yet we bore it because of the sunshine, which was glorious. From time to time I messed about with silly shots.

We ate in a leisurely manner, enjoying the view, watching the other people, and catching up with our news. Then we paid up. £15 each for those burgers and coffees. Not too much for a very decent rustic lunch. On the way out, there was another opportunity for frivolous posing:

Next, the beach.

The eye was constantly drawn to the Hotel. What a position it had. What a view. Imagine having a wedding there (as people do). Which rhymes...

But the Sands were also compelling. It was low tide. The sea was distant, but drew you to it. We walked out towards it. There were curious dark patches on the sand. On closer inspection, we saw they were apparently dark-coloured pulverised bits of shell, or possibly even bits of coal dust washed up here from South Wales, just across the Bristol Channel to the north. The tide had formed it into strange patterns:

These parts of the beach were also littered with razor shells. Rheya took a great interest in them.

She also kept an eye on how the waves were doing, and gave me her expert opinion on whether they were any good for surfing, or might be later on that day.

It was good to be sharing the sunshine with my surfing friend.

Ever alive to the possibilities of a shot, I noticed how distinct our shadows were on the sand. We played with the shapes we made:

Great fun! Time was passing though, and we wanted to leave before the parking became too expensive. But first, we had ice creams. (I'd have to think twice about having one nowadays, of course)

And then a look around the gift shop and the surf shop.

That was our undoing. Consternation at the ticket machine! We'd just gone over three hours, and the charge of £7 was rather more than expected. But hey, it had been worth it.

I took Rheya back to Putsborough. She intended to get in the sea one more time, around sunset, then drive back to Sussex. Here she is, overlooking Morte Bay with Woolacombe in the distance, the very model of the laid-back surfer with a smart converted van (which she calls Nemo), avid and able to dash off to the sea for a day and a half, whenever she fancied.

Next day it would be Vicky, and the weather wouldn't be so nice. It had started to turn, getting cooler and cloudier. Rheya and I had enjoyed the last really summer-like day of 2016.