Tue 24 Aug 2004
UK Trip Day Three (8/20/2004)
Posted by boz under TravelComments Off on UK Trip Day Three (8/20/2004)
Got up a little late, and got a late start (we made breakfast at 9:30, but didn’t get on the road until 11). I caught hell from the Lady for being “late”. I’ll do better.
Drove to Hay-on-Wye, the “town of books”. Took about 3 hours from Bath. The roads to Hay are “B” roads, and would be really fun on a motorcycle! The Lady and I split up (after having lunch at a cafe) and met back up at the cafe around 6.
Hay-on-wye has something like 40 bookstores in the small (~1500person) town. Richard Booth is the person who years ago bought Hay castle and decided to turn hay into the “Town of Books”. He has succeeded. :)
I didn’t really find anything there I wanted –> I visited the Bookstore in the Castle, Booth Books, and a number of others in the ~ 3 hours we were there. The vast majority of what I saw were either paperbacks or poor-quality hardcovers. I did ask about James Boswell and Thorne Smith in each store, but no one had any. Hay is the type of place you have to spend hours in any given store, hoping to find a jewel among the crap.
I didn’t.
I brought along an extra bag on this trip (empty) since I expected to be buying a lot of books. Ended up not buying a single book in Hay!
After Hay, we drove for about 4 hours to the BB in North Wales. Whoah! Quite a trip. I drove way too fast for the Lady, and she didn’t hesitate to let me know. Driving on the left is weird, but the Lady is my own Early Warning System, so we didn’t hit anything. When we got to Conwy (in Wales), we had dinner at “Alfredo’s Italian” restaurant. It was either that or an Indian place since everything else seemed to be done serving dinner. We made it “intact” (well, the vehicle did anyway) to the B+B about 10:30pm. Night Night.