Day 7: Hay-on-Wye

Today we were going to be heading to Hay-on-Wye. We had originally picked these days for our trip so that we would be able to go to the Hay festival. But after the whole driving experience I was worried about going to a place I knew to be so busy. We had decided that we should go, because we had really wanted to go. I mean who wouldn't want to go to a town that has 20 bookstores in it?

Lucky for me I had checked out information and found that they had a parking area across the river in a different 'town', and that they were offering free transport over to Hay. Solution! I don't have to drive through the busy town praying for a parking spot. We were ready now.

We drove down and through this new area of Wales. In fact Hay-on-Wye is across the border and on the England side. The ride on the bus was quite exciting. I am super happy I didn't have to drive through those streets. The town was lovely. So many interesting buildings and shops. We rode all the way through the town and up to the festival site.

Now here is the funny thing, there are authors here signing books and giving talks. I had hoped that I would be able to find someone that I knew. That I could continue my closeness to writers that I had every time I went to WorldCon or even ConStellation. But after looking through the list of authors that was going to be there, I realized I had no idea who any of them were.

We got off of the bus, they also had city buses that would take you back into town. This was good to know. I am sure we could have walked but it was still nice not to have to.

We found a place to eat. Then we wondered around the festival site. So many different kinds of food. There were also other kinds of vendors out there. Then we went into the main bookseller room. As I wondered around, I realized just how many of these people were 'British' authors and we just don't even have them on our bookshelves back in America. It was dumbfounding. I rarely found a book by an author I knew. I looked through the children's book, the fiction, shelf after shelf and only one or two that I had even heard of.

We continued around the festival site. Then stopped at the bathroom (toilets). Now normally I am not huge in talking about toilets, but I am going to make an exception here. These appeared to be what we would call porta-potties. I was not all that happy about needing to use them. But I didn't know if we would find a different option in the small shops and stores that we would be heading to soon.

So off to the porta-potties...

All I can say is WOW! We totally need these things in America. They were not the yucky, smelly, plastic boxes that we were used to. They were a sort of trailer (portable). You step inside and find a sink with running water and four real live bathroom stalls with flush toilets. Of course the stall were small, but not much smaller than our yucky porta-potties. Flush the clean nice toilet. Wash your hands. And we were one our way.

After our bathroom adventure we got on the city bus so that we could go down and wander through all of the bookstores. I do believe that I would have enjoyed the bookstores more on a non-festival day. It was quite busy all around. But I have never been in or even imagined a town with so many bookstores. It as really awesome. It was nice to just be able to look around so many stores. Some of them were several stories high. There were bookshelves around every room and sometimes even up and down the stairs. I have to say I was very good and did not really buy books. I had to remember that I would need to take them home on the ferry and then the plane.

It was a good day of being surrounded by books. :)