Wye Valley Walk: A Day spent in Hay-on-Wye, May 27

She Said:
This was a welcome rest day for us. We lolled in our room this morning with coffees in bed - very luxurious.

Our room - we are staying in the Oliver Cromwell suite (!) - is huge and comfy and even has a separate sitting room where we read and stare out at the countryside from whence we came. Lots of low beams and low doorways, though (Mind Your Head stenciled in Elizabethan type over each) and the floors are at crazy angles.
We ate in their Michelin-recommended restaurant last night and waddled upstairs to our room, fat and happy.

Hay-on-Wye is the Booksellers Capital of the World. Loads of bookshops selling every genre you can think of. Great fun to poke around.

There is one castle with visible ruins (dangerous and no admittance) and another castle with no visible ruins (the castle site as an earth covered mound and the surrounding moat as a deep, deep ditch) that round out the town's attractions. Lots of galleries and ladies clothing shops, too. Easy to see why it is a destination spot.

We stopped in the Tourist Info Center for postcards and chatted with the volunteer on duty. We told her it was nice to have a day off and she replied: "Yes, you need it - even God took a day off." Clever and sweet.
At a shop nearby, I scored a Green Man for our garden.

We walked to the Co-op Market for dinner fixings and plan to eat in our sitting room, enjoying pints of the local and resting our feet before tomorrow's walk.

1 mile (maybe)

He Said:
It's been a relaxing day, time to look more closely around our town of Hay-on-Wye. It seems to have been one man's vision to create a small village that concentrates on cherishing, trading and selling books of all kinds. There are 30+ book stores in a town of a less than 2000 residents.
Hay-on-Wye
I even saw a poster calling for the banning of all Kindle readers in town by passing a law.
There is also a large supermarket chain trying to build in town, most people are against it; it really would spoil the charming, relaxed feeling of the place.
All in all, I'm surprised there are so many people coming here even on this quiet weekend before their annual festival begins. The streets had a buzz more from pedestrians than from cars, and that's a good thing here.

Here are some photos from today:

The Old Black Lion