The Weekend

There's been so much serious stuff to talk about that I haven't got round to mentioning my holidays yet. Hay Traveller's Club is brilliant, and so well organised! We had a long weekend in Northumberland. The hotel was clean and comfortable, and the food was very good (and lots of it!). On the way up, we stopped in York, which is a wonderful city, and I finally got to visit Jorvik Viking Centre (and drink some local beer). The following day, we visited Bamburgh Castle, which is now one of my favourite castles of all time, and Lindisfarne, which was surprisingly full of booze! (The priory ruins are impressive, as well). Beamish open air museum was great fun, and they have a Blackpool tram that I might once have travelled on as a child! We were there all day, and didn't manage to see everything. On the way back, it started to rain, heavily, but that didn't matter too much as we stopped at Chatsworth House, which is mainly under cover. They also have amazing gardens, but we contented ourselves with looking at them from the comfort of the house!
I'm writing more about the holiday over on my other blog, Gateway to Ytir, if anyone wants to find out What I Did On My Holidays.
I'll be joining the Traveller's Club again next year (sadly I can't manage to go on any of the day trips planned for the rest of this year).

Meanwhile, in Hay, the Film Society had their first film of the season, in the Booth's Bookshop Cinema, and had to turn people away. The film was The Lady, about Aung San Suu Kyi, the Lady of Burma, who was under house arrest for many years and is the leader of the political opposition to the regime there.
On Saturday, the town was full of opportunities for bargain hunters, with the Car Boot Sale at the school. I found a pack of I Ching cards - I've never seen it done in card form before, and the air was full of the scent of lavender from one stall. I bought a bunch and now my entire house is scented.
In the Buttermarket, the North Weir Trust were having their table sale, but I got there a bit late.
Round the back of the Cinema Bookshop, the people who have moved into one of the two houses there were having a yard sale, to try to dispose of all the bits and pieces they hadn't managed to sort out before they moved.
The afternoon was so nice that I took a book up to Kilvert's, to sit in the sun with a drink for a while. They had Trekker's Ale on from Wye Valley, to celebrate the Walking Festival which will be taking place around Hay all next week.