Hay-on-Wye Dispatch - Friday, 12th April 2013

Dear Friends, time for some thoughts on Wales. Since I last wrote, we have enjoyed ourselves very much, although will be pleased to have a little more space when we get home. We spent Tuesday evening watching Dean Spanley, courtesy of our hosts and are very pleased we saw this quirky little film, as it relaxed us beautifully for our big day of driving to the Priory. It wouldn’t have been such a big day if we hadn’t set the GPS to take us somewhere else first, gotten waylaid, and only realised when we weren’t climbing hills that our car wasn’t taking us to the Priory and lunch!

Wes has done all the driving so far and he seems to cope very well with this lovely little single car lanes. We have to drive on one to get to our cottage and we had just commented that it would be very dangerous to try and drive in Australia with these dense high hedges on the sides of the road, as we would never spot the kangaroos until they were on the bonnet, when a large brown Labrador leapt the hedge in front of us and bounded across the road. Leaping labs in Wales was not a sight we had expected to see! We drove for miles enjoying the pretty countryside, the lovely valleys, the picturesque villages, and learning how not to stall the car when faced with an oncoming vehicle demanding right of way. We took a side road to find Arthur’s Stone and were just about to give up, when we realised the GPS was telling us we were on the Arthur’s Stone Lane, so we followed it for a while and pulled up behind another car similarly looking for this wondrous sight. Jeff, a Yank, who now lives in England, is an expert on lichen and we will never be able to look at ancient monuments again without realising that they are live organisms.

We eventually made our way to the ruined Priory and into the tiny bar and lounge where amazingly we were served fresh and yummy scampi & cod, washed down by tiny bottles of French merlot. We enjoyed the walk around afterwards and the very old church that still survives. Earlier in the day we had stopped at St Faith’s Church in Donstone, which caught my eye because nearly all the graves had fresh daffodils or other spring flowers on them. We have never seen such a well-cared for graveyard and the church was equally loved, indeed it proclaimed itself as the centre of the community. Tea and coffee was available free of charge to visitors, there were flowers everywhere, and I suspect God is very pleased with what he sees in this little spot. We signed the visitors’ book, made a healthy donation and went on our way quite charmed by this little village.

 

That night we settled down with G&Ts and some local cheeses to watch another DVD, this time a locally-situated one entitled On the Black Hill, where we had no problems recognising the Hay market-place when it featured in one scene. It was a very moving film which gave us a good understanding of life on the land here through 3 generations.

We had decided to walk into Hay the next morning and buy some more books as we had heaps of bookstores to try and came home with another 17 for us, a bottle of tempranillo, some smoked mackerel, some vegetarian samosas and more tonic water for our Hendricks gin. I made an appointment for a facial as it is 4 months since Judi & I had our last visit with Sarah in Ballarat and we have been unable to find a replacement yet. The rain came down just after our host came in with extra wood and reset our fire. Perfect! Then suddenly our hosts appeared. Wes had invited them in for drinks on Saturday at 5pm and that had translated into Thursday, so we quickly rearranged our schedule, shared our wine, gave them our gift of a Brian Nash print of Clunes (also a book town) and made them sit on our little sofa while we perched on the chairs. After they left we watched Closer with Clive Owen & Jude Law, which wasn’t as good as our previous films.

Today we had decided to drive to the beach and chose Tenby as our destination. We detoured to see a ruined Abbey, stopped by the side of the road to share some tea, and eventually reached Tenby at lunchtime. Fortunately I needed a loo and the nearest was at the bottom of our car park overlooking the beach. We stumbled into a beautiful restaurant called South Beach, where we were charmed by lovely service, large dishes of mussels cooked in lemongrass, lime, chili, coriander, garlic, cream & parsley. We somehow followed this up with Welsh ice-cream which is rather wonderful as well.  We couldn’t fault the staff, the service and the cuisine. Afterwards we went for a long walk on the beach saying hello to as many of the dogs as we could. I then did a quick walk into the town centre, while Wes had a rest and I found it very charming as it is within the walls of the old castle and the road is still cobblestones.

We drove back home and decided to watch the Freo vs Essendon match without knowing the score and it was an incredible game. Congratulations to Essendon who looked gone for all money at quarter time …. we wondered how many supporters turned off in disgust at half-time and missed all the excitement and drama of the last five minutes. We are both very relaxed and really enjoying being in the one spot and travelling out from our base. Tomorrow we are hoping to watch Black Caviar’s race before heading back into Hay-on-Wye for breakfast and some more books.

Our home as photographed by David Castles who decided to come and visit us this week without first checking to see if we were at home. He stayed at Jubilee Lake Caravan Park and then came to check and see if John had brought the bins in!