Monday 22 June 2009

Big Lorries

I stepped out of my front door at the end of lunchtime just as a big white lorry was trying to turn the corner from the bridge.
This is something in the nature of a spectator sport in Hay - it's not the easiest of corners to negotiate, and it isn't made any easier by the car drivers who park on the double yellow lines. I'm sure that, to most visitors to Hay, it seems like just a little road junction and it couldn't possibly matter if they just parked there for five (ten, more) minutes. In fact, it's a major route in and out of town, and is used by the Co-op lorries, coaches and buses, tractors with long trailers, Clive Price's lorries, Burgoynes marquee lorries, big horse trailers and cattle trucks...and today, a long white lorry which had a number plate marked Czechoslovakia at the front, and Austria at the back. So not a local, then.
He managed the corner successfully, and pulled up at the Clock Tower. With a piece of paper in his hand and a puzzled expression on his face he wandered into Rose's bookshop, after stopping to ask a couple of tourists who were only able to wave their town guides at him.
After a few minutes, he set off towards Brecon - it would probably have been easier for him to cross the river at Glasbury, if he'd known the area at all.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Blame it on the sat-navs!

Eigon said...

Probably true for our Czech/Austrian friend, but most of the big traffic that comes round that corner is local, and needs to go that way - and needs enough room on Broad Street to get round the corner.

Of course, Talgarth has it worse. They have an incredibly tight sequence of bends in the middle of town - and a sign on the old mill building saying "Car transporter, please do not hit this house again".
I think it's got better since the new road was built, though.

Bovey Belle said...

We have a tight turn onto our iron bridge over the river too, with a Dim Parcio/No Parking sign, but you wouldn't believe the people who park there all the same. Not locals, obviously!

We know Hay well - were there only last night actually (food attack on the Chip Shop as we were driving home to Wales from Sheffield). Before that, we were there the previous Friday, coming back from Hereford . . . As a bookaholic it has to be my favourite place, and it is so unspoilt too.