Sunday 25 November 2018

Wayzgoose and Cider Mill

There's been a lot happening around town this weekend. I was working on Sunday (I always seem to miss Hay Does Vintage), but I managed to see a lot on Saturday.
I got to the Story of Books shop quite early. Upstairs one of the Blind Bookworms was just setting up for music making later - he had his trumpet with him. There were several representatives of local small presses there, and downstairs there was the opportunity to try printing myself. Someone from the Letterpress Collective in Bristol had set up his Printing Bike in the front of the shop, and was offering to let people print their own bookmarks.
A person can never have too many bookmarks!
I think on the Sunday it was Christmas cards that were being printed.
The Letterpress Collective can be found at theletterpresscollective.org

Just a few doors along, at the greengrocers, there was a cider tasting session going on. The shop was filled with a wonderful scent of mulling cider. Fair Oak Cider is made on a farm in Bacton, Herefordshire, where they've brought an old cider press back into production after a gap of about a hundred years, working it with a horse. Tommy is a Gypsy Cob gelding who lives in the hills above Hay-on-Wye. They think it's the only horse-powered commercial cider press in the country, and they use old cider apple varieties like Dabinett, Kingston Black, Yarlington Mill and Foxwhelp, from small orchards around the Golden Valley.
Even when the mill is not working, visitors are welcome to taste and buy cider by appointment. Their website (with a little film of Tommy in action at the cider press) is at www.fairoakcider.co.uk

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