More Pics of Hay-On-Wye

Hay-On-Wye

B had one place that she definitely wanted to visit while she was here and that was Hay-on-Wye, a village in Wales just over the English border. Due to H's school schedule it turned out that Tuesday would be the best day to go and it had to be a day trip. I was originally going to suggest we be on the road by 7 but we decided on 8 and actually hit 8:20. Moments like this make me wonder as I believe I have said here before if our home will be more harmonious once A is of the age that I can hand her a cup of coffee in the morning. She is not a morning person and she gets that directly from me. I can hold it together just a sliver better once I’m caffeinated. Tuesday morning she was at her finest. She couldn't find a book she wanted to pack for the drive and she was having a meltdown. So basically my teeth were clenched as I pulled out of our road let alone in unchartered motorways. There’s no way to take public transport to get there so driving it was.

The drive was beautiful and both H and I wondered how much more beautiful it would be if it wasn't winter and it wasn't one of those oh so common UK gray days. I had read up just a little about Hay-on-Wye before we went. It is a village full of bookshops. I was excited to see this, hoping I would find something that interested me enough to read from cover to cover. On the drive I was thinking about the last book that I read in its entirety and was embarrassed to admit it had been a book I finished on our train journey to Edinburgh in November. I go through periods where there is just nothing that interests me enough and this is definitely one of them. Funny though, as I was faced with shelves and shelves of secondhand books, I was searching my brain to remember something I had wanted to read. I picked up a copy of David Sedaris’ Naked just to read one of my favorite funny parts to H. I should have purchased it.

We spent a few hours there before we headed back to our neck of the woods. I would have enjoyed the trip a lot more if I wouldn’t have been driving so much in one day, about six hours. Driving here is not my cup of tea.

Stranger in a Strange Land

While in Wales I went to a customer dinner and we actually didn’t talk about work. Instead we talked about cricket, snooker, football, Welsh and English geography and the Ryder Cup which will be held at the hotel we were staying at in 2010. I had nothing to offer!

Welsh

Like visiting Quebec, all signage in Wales is bilingual. I wasn’t expecting that. Here is an example of the language on some tea bags that were in my room. On the way to the train station my work colleague was asking the taxi driver if he spoke Welsh. He didn’t, however, he was an Irishman who has lived in Wales for thirty-seven years. This question started him on a rant about the two schools in Newport where children were taught Welsh. His opinion was that if a child was going to learn a language, they should be learning a language that would help them travel abroad, not preserve one used only locally.

Interesting Things Out the Window of the Taxi

We took a scenic drive (accidentally) in a taxi. We saw more sheep than people in Wales.

Travelling to Wales

Tomorrow I am going by train with a few colleagues to Wales to visit a customer. It will be my first visit there. Whenever I think of Wales, I inevitably think of Tom Jones, my mother’s favourite singer.