A Certain Lack of Joined Up Thinking

Someone I know told me he'd overheard a conversation in Londis the other day.
The lady concerned was telling the ladies behind the counter that she'd had a phone call from Barclays Bank, asking why she was now using the Post Office instead of the bank....
Maybe the fact that Barclays closed the Hay branch just a couple of weeks before might have had something to do with it?

The End of the Model Railway Exhibition

Salem Chapel is now up for sale, which means that the Model Railway Exhibition in the old schoolroom of the chapel will have to move out.
So, on Saturday 3rd and 10th, from 11am to 3pm, they are having a Closing Down Sale.
It'll be sad to see it go, after they put so much hard work into it, but they're ready to call it a day.

Rhosgoch Tractor Run

A glimpse of the Rhosgoch Young Farmers' Tractor Run as they came round the Blue Boar corner. They were raising money for St Michael's Hospice this year.

Colossal Critter

My camera is too weedy to have done this justice - so this picture was taken by Marva Jackson Lord.
It was just starting to go dark when the colossal critter arrived at the Clock Tower, and there were lights inside its body as the puppeteers walked up and down. They must have been freezing!
I was standing with Huw the poet, who pulled a winning ticket in the raffle - he was given a card to take to Green Ink Bookshop to claim his prize.

After a while I realised what the giant praying mantis reminded me of, with its impressively clacking mandibles and red eyes. It's the creature from the climax of Quatermass and the Pit! (which dates me terribly - but it's still a good film).

Small Business Saturday

Welcome to Josh and Elen Green, who have just opened Green Ink Booksellers by the Buttermarket.

Campsite in the Woods

Over the last couple of years, a lot of work has been done on the footpath through the woods on the far side of the bridge from Hay. It's part of the Offa's Dyke Path, and the woodland it runs through is under new ownership. They've cleared a lot of undergrowth as well, and cut down some of the trees.

Now the owners, at The Start B&B just across the road from the woodland, want to turn the area into a camp site, with 9 "safari" tents, a café, shower and toilet block, and a tree house. They also want to create a new car park and turning area - at present it's not possible to get cars into the area, and until recently the only access was steps, which has now been turned into a ramp.

Alan Nicholls has been leafletting local houses with his objections to the scheme - this is how I found out about it. He is concerned about the impact on the wildlife on the site, and the difficulty of access (cars do tend to come down that hill to the bridge very fast). He's also concerned that this could be the 'thin edge of a wedge' - if planning approval was given for this camp site, it might encourage others to apply. In fact, there was an application some time ago on the other side of the road from the present site, more or less opposite the church across the river, which was turned down.

I have to admit I groaned when I saw the inclusion of a café in the plans - Hay is full of cafes, and only two minutes walk away. The toilets also worried me, until I saw on the plans that they will be composting toilets. The Community Garden, just up the hill on the other side of the road, has a composting toilet, which seems to work well. The "tree house" isn't what I'd call a treehouse, either - the plans are for a wooden hut on stilts with trees round it.

The consultation runs until 7th November, and the full details can be found online at Powys Planning Applications under the code 18/0688/FUL.

I've been reading the Ecology Report on the site, commissioned by Mr and Mrs Farnworth at The Start. It was carried out by an experienced ecologist called Stephen West, who looked for signs of all the species which need to be protected by law, such as bats, barn owls, badgers, dormice and crested newts.
The report says that no further trees are going to be cut down, and the lighting for the area is going to be low level, with no floodlights, and designed to have the minimum impact on nocturnal species.
The ecologist also laid out a plan of woodland management - the owners are intending to put up bird, bat and mammal boxes to encourage roosting and nesting, which would be monitored for two years after installation. He even considers that the woodland management could improve the conditions for dormice, by encouraging a shrub layer throughout the woodland for them to move through and feed on.
They will also be planting native species of trees and shrubs as screens around the camping sites, such as hazel, crab apple, oak, rowan and birch. They are also planning the proposed works so as not to damage any tree roots on the site, and they will be keeping dead wood features (dead tree trunks, for instance) which are important for insects.

The Colossal Critter and an Isle Full of Noises

Despite good intentions, I haven't managed to make it to the Green exhibition at Hazy Daze, put on by Botany and Other Stories - and it closes this weekend!
For the occasion, the Colossal Critter is back - at six o'clock by the Clock Tower, and lit up!

The next project for Botany and Other Stories is happening at St Mary's Church on Saturday 3rd November at 7.30pm. It's called The Isle is Full of Noises, a line taken from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Theatre company Three Inch Fools have created a musical take on Shakespeare, with passages from the plays that are related to the natural world.
Tickets are £10 for adults, £5 for under 18 and toddlers free, from Hazy Daze, on the market on Thursday, or on the door at the church.
Proceeds from the performance will go to the maintenance and upkeep of the churchyard in a way that is sensitive to biodiversity.

A Weekend Away at FantasyCon

I've been away for the weekend, in Chester, to attend FantasyCon. I didn't go to EasterCon this year, and I needed to spend some time with my Tribe - authors and academics and people who run small presses and publish magazines, and who can make obscure film, TV and book references safe in the knowledge that almost everyone in the room will understand them without any need to explain.
I had the most wonderful time, met some amazing people, and now I'm really, really tired. Everything went really smoothly over the weekend right up to the moment I got back to Hereford yesterday evening - when the T14 was half an hour late. In fairness, the traffic in Hereford was appalling, and the students who were waiting to go home didn't seem too concerned, so I assume they're used to delays of this sort. Half an hour after we all got on the bus, though, we'd still only got as far as Asda....
I'll be blogging in more detail (much more detail!) about the Con over on Morwenna's Tower, and I'll be back to talking about what's going on in Hay on Thursday.

Music and Dancing at the Baskie

What a brilliant night!
Thomasin (with trumpet and also playing flute and Irish whistle and singing) came along with the Speedgums (double bass, banjo, ukulele and kazoo), and there was lots of collaboration, people getting up to dance, a massed kazoo chorus, Tom with his piano accordion getting everyone to join in, plus guitars, an autoharp, castanets, a clarinet-type instrument, spoons, melodion, a fiddle and harmonicas. The official session stopped at about 11pm, but the players just carried on!
(photo taken by Bob Evans, and shared on Facebook)

In Remembrance

Here's the new poppy by the war memorial.

To take this picture, I hopped across the trench that's being dug right round the Castle for their new utility cables. So far, it's gone all along the back lane, along the edge of the Square, and now it's heading up Castle Street to go into the Honesty Garden next to the door in the wall. I've been peering into the trench to see if there's anything of archaeological interest, but I haven't seen anything yet.

Wet and Windy

I feel sorry for the organisers of the Walking Festival this weekend. It was quite enough for me to go along the Riverside path a little way to take these pictures.
Here's the canoe landing stage, with the water coming right over into the car park.
And here's the view under Hay Bridge:

Survey of Library Users

Tucked away on page 7 of the Brecon & Radnor Express this week is a small article about a survey of library users across Powys. The survey can be done online at https://customer.powys.gov.uk/libraries and on paper forms available at the libraries.
There are questions about online library services, and also the various benefits using the library service provides. The survey is only for this week, October 8th to 13th, so there's still time to take part. Users of the mobile library services will be surveyed over the rest of the month.
A library survey was last carried out by Powys County Council in 2015, when over 1,100 Powys residents took part.

Singing Together About a Cowboy

Huw Parsons invited me to do some more singing for his podcast - check out huwspodcast.wordpress.com for the finished result.
He took me over to Clyro Church, which has lovely acoustics, and I brought out the booklet the Wild West. I've sung one or two songs from it at the Baskie on Wednesday nights, and Huw particularly liked The Lone Cowboy, which I don't suppose has been sung many times since it was used on the BBC radio schools programme Singing Together in 1971. All the songs in the booklet were specially written for the BBC by Paul Townsend, with the music written by Michael Rose.
We sang one or two other songs while we were there, which was a lot of fun, but this is the one he chose for his podcast.

Hay Walking Festival

The Festival is back, from Friday 12th October to Sunday 14th October, with a variety of walks, including walks with pack ponies! They have a website at www.haywalkingfestival.com where people can book in advance, and last minute tickets as well as information and advice will be available at the Tourist Information Office.
On Friday evening, at 7.30pm at the Swan, is a free event with three speakers talking about the journeys they've taken. Barry Pilton will be talking about walking the Pennine Way (he wrote the book One Man and His Bog about it in 1986); Pete Ward will be talking about cycling the Camino de Santiago, the famous pilgrimage route in Spain, and local dairy farmer Paul Richards took part in the Mongol Derby, racing on horseback across the Mongolian desert! I'm looking forward to going to that, though I don't think I'll manage to get to any of the walks.
Which is a pity.
Catherine Kramer is leading an eleven mile walk to Craswall Priory - I've done that once, and I was nearly weeping with exhaustion on the way back, and that was twenty years ago when I was a lot fitter! They're not all that strenuous, though!
Another walk goes to Mouse Castle Wood, which is a magical place, and others cover the landscape of On the Black Hill and the countryside around Snodhill Castle. Around Talgarth, walk leader Rob Yorke will be talking about the changing countryside, including farming practices, wildlife conservation, rewilding, public access, new crops like the daffodils that are grown locally for a cancer treatment, and food production for supermarkets.
There's a look at the industrial past of Cusop Dingle, and a visit to Talgarth's Witches Pool, and a hike out to Peterchurch with time for a drink at the Nag's Head before catching the Hay Ho bus back to Hay on the Sunday.
Kilvert is not neglected - there's a walk starting from Bredwardine Church, and local author Jasper Fforde will be leading a walk taking in the memorial of a local woman who died in a snowstorm in 1925 and Twm Tobacco's Grave.
In Hay itself, there's a bookshop tour and the Timbuktu Trail, celebrating the similarities and differences between Hay and twin town Timbuktu in Mali.

Lots of Exhibitions at the Globe!

Well, I went to the Globe last night to see Thomasin's art and ceramics, and the photos from the WyeLocal calendar - but that wasn't all that was on display.
Downstairs in the café Cliff Hatton was exhibiting his cartoons, some on fishing, some topical, and some about Hay. He was having a bit of trouble with the display, having mistakenly thought that sticky fixers would be enough to keep his pictures on the wall - one or two had already come crashing down!
Also downstairs were some of Thomasin's ceramics, including a life sized bust, arranged around the edges of the room, which was set out for a private function later that evening. As I lingered to look at her oil paintings at the top of the stairs, she passed me cradling a small gondola she had made, with tourist couple seated amidships, taking photos with a little camera - the detail was impressive.
Around the main hall were more of Thomasin's paintings. Most were of landscapes, but I rather liked a still life with guitar, entitled Reasons to be Cheerful. I also treated myself to a CD of Thomasin's music. I haven't listened to it yet, but I have heard her perform some of her songs at the Baskie at the regular music sessions there. Her friends the Speedgums are thanked on the sleevenotes, (double bass and ukulele players) so I assume they're featured on the CD. I've got quite a collection now of CDs by musicians I know.
Up on the gallery was the WyeLocal exhibition, a thank you from the magazine to the photographers who had often been contributing to the competition for the calendar for several years. As well as the 12 pictures from the calendar other work by the photographers is on display, and some are for sale. I chatted to one lady (Claire Young?) who visits the area from her home in South Gloucestershire regularly because her family originally came from Carmarthenshire. She had a long drive home, but she said she really liked what she had seen of Hay, and wanted to come back.

Exhibition at the Globe

This evening, I'll be at the Globe for the start of an exhibition by Thomasin Toohie. Thomasin is a painter and ceramic artist as well as an accomplished musician, playing a variety of instruments - mostly Irish folk music.
She also teaches painting locally. I've never seen her paintings, but she says in WyeLocal, where she is featured as this month's Local Talent, that she likes painting in oils. She also sells her work through the Art Shop in Abergavenny and Rostra Gallery in Bath.

At the same time, WyeLocal is also organising an exhibition at the Globe, for the photographers who have contributed to their calendar this year. They have been producing a calendar of local landscapes since 2009, with photos by local photographers, six of whom will be exhibiting the images chosen for the calendar and other works. The calendar will also be on sale (it's really gorgeous this year).

Sad to See Them Go

Walking through town this lunchtime, I passed the old Library. Parked to one side was a van, and workmen were loading it with the shelves that had been left inside when the Library closed.
Just round the corner, another van was parked outside Barclays Bank, where more workmen were dismantling the bank counter and loading up all the shelves and so on that were left inside.
I peered in - it was strange to see the room looking so big, without the counter across the middle of it.
The bank is now up for sale, but I don't know what's going to happen to the old Library building.

A Walk up Cusop Dingle

Some time ago, I was at a Cusop History Group meeting where a few of the members said they were going to be cutting back the trees around the lime kiln up Cusop Dingle. I rarely go up the Dingle any more, so this was a good excuse for a long walk.
I chose a lovely September afternoon, so warm that I took my coat off, and the leaves were just changing colour on the trees.
The Dingle gradually gets wilder and wilder as you go further up, though it's a fairly gentle gradient beside the Dulas Brook.
The end of the paved road goes past Brickyard Cottage, and then becomes a track across a field (with some curious cows and sheep in it). Gravel has been put down, which makes it look like a private driveway, but this is the pathway to get further up the Dingle.
This was the best photo I could manage of the lime kiln - I wasn't about to go scrambling about in the undergrowth, so I took it where the path rises to go past the top of the lime kiln:

Around the front it looks fairly well preserved, but the top had several quite sizable trees growing out of it, which have now been cut down to stumps. The hole in the top of the lime kiln has a mixture of branches and wire fencing on top to stop the unwary from falling down it.

On the way back down the Dingle, I stopped at a friend's house for tea (I'd been invited when their car passed me on the way up). They told me that most of the bedrock of the Dingle is sandstone (which I already knew - my ex-husband studied geology), but that there's a thin layer of limestone at a certain height up the hill, just about where this lime kiln, and several others in the area, are found. The lime may have been used in the nearby brick works, or spread on fields. The brick works didn't last very long - my friend said they had some of the bricks made there, and they were rubbish!