Hay is located in a region known as Marches. The Marches is the dividing line, or border, between Wales and England. Defensive castles were built along the region to keep the Welsh out of England!

The main town of Hay is located in Wales in a county called Powys (Pow-iss) but some of it is in England in a county called Herefordshire*. As you drive down the Hereford road you'll see a Welcome to England sign at the edge of the town proper. On the return drive you'll see the sign for Hay behind the England sign welcoming you into town. One can literally stand with a foot in each country. Very disconcerting!

* In England the counties are called shires. Herefordshire is literally county Hereford. Shire's date back hundred's of years. The county constable/police was known as the shire reeve...the county police. Today the shire reeve has been shortened to sheriff!

Hay dates back to medieval times to when the original castle was built in the 13th century. A small village built up around the castle but the main purpose of the castle was to protect the marches. There are hundreds of similar castles along the marches. As with

the border with Scotland, those who lived in these castles tended to be beholden only to themselves, their loyalties between Wales and England swinging with the best deal on the table!

In the more peaceful times of the 17th century a manor house was added onto the original tower, but eventually the place fell into disuse. An Englishman named Richard Booth moved to Hay in 1960, which began the strange transformation of the little town of Hay.

Richard Booth, King of Hay

Today there are 1300 citizens and 39 bookstores in Hay. That's 1 bookstore for every 33.3 people in the town! Each store sells second hand books, except for Pemberton's that sells new books. Most sell a little of everything but specialize in a topic. Some stores sell only what they specialize in, such as C Ardens, which sells books on gardening, ornithology, and other gardeny, birdy kinds of outdoorsy things

Beside C Ardens is Hay's other large bookstore, Hay Cinema Bookstore that also stocking over 100,000 titles. This store is in Hay's old movie theater also 3 floors, mostly a maze of shelves with difficult to read maps posted all over the place. We never did find out if the town has a theater anywhere else.

Another fairly large bookstore was Broad Street Bookstore. This shop is

Broad Street Books

set up in what was probably the stable section of a half timber house. There are nooks and crannies throughout that are rented to individuals selling collections. This was a pretty cool place to wander through, and the man running the place, Tony Roberts, was one of the other nicest people we'd met in Hay. Very chatty, very funny and very sincere. He's not a native of Hay, like most people in town, but is a strong advocate of the town.

Other shops in town include -

Addyman Annexe and Addyman Books, two shops owned by Ann Addyman, who made a name for herself in 2001 when she protested Bill Clinton's visit to Hay by promoting Monika Lewinski's book in her shop window and surrounded it with cigars and a little blue dress!

Murder and Mayhem, another Addyman store, specializing in murder mysteries.

David Lee Books, where everything in the basement is just £1. Some good stuff surprisingly.

Marijana Dworski Books, yeah I know, looks like marijuana books. Honestly they specialize in travel and language books.

Mark Westwood Books, has a little of everything but specializes in sciences, medicine, philosophy and history. We actually bought more books here then Booths or Hay Cinema.

Bookends, sells everything for £1.

Backfold Books & Bygones, sells a combination of books and antiques.

Rose Books, The Children's Bookshop and The Children's Bookshop #2, all sell...children's books.

The Poetry Bookshop, sells all poetry.

B&K Books, sells books on....bees!

And this is less than HALF of the shops in the town! We had 4 days in Hay and still never saw everything.

Town Crier

On top of this town having a self-proclaimed King, it also has a Town Crier. The Crier walks through the streets ringing his bell crying, "Here ye, here ye, all take notice...." then launches into an ad of some sort. Here he is on the corner in front of the Butter Market (see below) crying about a local charity event.

Apparently the Crier can be hired by just about anyone to announce just about anything...charity events to birth announcements.

Back to the Butter Market, this is a Romanesque structure in the center of town where butter was once sold, hence the name. Today the weekly market takes place on Thursday. Part of it is in the old square behind the market and overflow stalls go inside the Butter Market. On the day we were there, stalls included plants, baked goods, crafts, and guess what? Books! In the photo below you can see the sign for a bookstore. That was Mark Westwood Books. This will probably be the first place we hit when we go back! Hopefully it will be a Thursday because the market is terrific. In the square there were food vendors, produce sellers, more plants, crafts, sweets, and other fun stuff.

While in Hay, I made a new friend named Ben. He and his master were shopping in the Butter Market when I saw him looking at me through the bars. I'd been listening to the town crier (above) and as I turned to leave, Ben's sweet little eyes begged me to pet him.

Ben is a special dog. Most Border Collies are raised for working livestock...sheep mainly, sometimes cows, and even goats or ducks and geese. But some are service dogs. In this case, Ben is a seeing eye dog. I'd actually be talking with his master, didn't get his name, for about 5 minutes and didn't realize he was blind! Ben is his eyes and has been for the last couple years. He said that Ben was the best helper dog he'd ever had. That says something for the breed, for sure.

No matter what anyone thinks, Hay is not just known for the books. There are quite a few great pubs and inns. We spent time in Kilverts (below) and the Blue Boar. Other good ones were the Rose and Crown and the Old Black Lion.

Inns are traditional establishments where the pub also has accommodation.

There are 2 types of pub in Wales, free house and the other is brewery house. A brewery house is a pub owned by a brewery, run by hired managers. A free house is a pub free of brewery affiliation or ownership. It's a privately owned establishment. What's cool about free houses is that they often bring in a guest beer every week or so. The Welsh tend to have an affinity for ale's rather than beer, but there is always a selection for everyone from Guinness (stout) to Carlsberg (lager), ale falling in between. Peter reckons that of all the ale's he tried, John Hancock's was the best of them, served at a hand pumped tap at Kilvert's Inn.

At the edge of Hay is a pub called Three Tuns M&B whose sign reads, The last free house in Wales, which it technically is, as it's on the border to England (see above). M&B stands for Marvelous Beer (below).

Hay isn't just for those that like books and beer. There's a cute wine shop on Broad Street (below) that took the name of the town and twisted it to suit the shop. They called it Hay on Wine! Very cute.

Another great shop was Brook Street Pottery. We bought a few pots there. Excellent stuff! They specialize in a style called a Long Tom, which is what we bought. They look like old fashioned clay chimney stacks. They're like a standard terracotta pot but are made much taller. Planting very tall narrow plants in these pots looks dramatic. I've got a new avocado tree intended for one of the pots. Not sure about the others, but I got 4 pots for $20! In the US they'd be $20 each.

Other memorable things and places in Hay include The Granary Cafe which specializes in vegetarian food, Denny's Gifts which has a fantastic collection of Border Collie goodies and a really nice shop owner...Denny...Hay Petshop (well duh!), the weekly market (as above), the architecture, but mostly the people. They were all so nice and not one laughed as I botched every Welsh word when I tried to pronounce it.

Would I go back to Hay? In a heartbeat! And you know, property is fairly affordable too...we looked! Just waiting for our ship to come in!