Balsam Bashing

 It's that time of year again!  The Himalayan balsam is springing up along the banks of the river, and needs to be pulled up.  It's an invasive plant that swamps native wild plants.

To that end, there will be a gathering of Balsam Bashers at the Warren on Saturday, at 11am - meeting at the Warren car park.  Volunteers are asked to wear long sleeves and long trousers, and decent footwear, and bring gardening gloves.  The balsam is defenceless, but the nettles and thistles can fight back!

If anyone is interested in going, please contact Sean O'Donoghue on Facebook on the Re/Wilding, Biodiversity and Sustaining the Countryside - Powys and Hereford page.

New Local Brewery

 I saw some new beer bottles at Londis last week, so I picked up three of them to give them a try.

They're from a new brewery in Three Cocks called Antur Brew (Antur is Welsh for 'adventure').

I tried the New England IPA, the Pale Ale and the Alt, which is a German style of beer (and a pun on the Welsh 'Allt', or 'peak').  I enjoyed them all - they're full of flavour and very refreshing, so when I go shopping for beer again I will try the Helles, which is their fourth beer style.

They have a bottle shop which is open to the public at Three Cocks, and will fill re-usable beer containers straight from the tap - they sell Growlers (I'm not sure how many pints a Growler will hold!).  And they will deliver if the order is over twenty four beers.

They also run brewery tours for up to fifteen people, with a tasting session.

They have a website at anturbrew.com

Counselling on Castle Street

 

This used to be the St Michael's Hospice shop.  It's been renovated at the same time as workmen were renovating the flat above this shop and the estate agents' next door.  Before the blinds were put up, it was possible to see that the front part of the shop has been made into a comfortable waiting room, with the back room presumably for the actual counselling sessions.

ATM Removal

 I only noticed the sign today.

It was only a matter of time before this ATM was removed, now the building is no longer a Post Office, and it's good news that a new one will be fitted at the car park toilets.

Poetry Competition Results

 There were a lot of entries this time - around fifty, and the judge complimented the high standards.

The winner was Michelle Pearce, of the Hay Writers Group, and the runner up was also from Hay Writers - Jean O'Donoghue.  In third place was Jaz Slade from Devon, and two other writers were highly commended.

Vintage Bentley

 

Glorious vintage Bentley seen in Castle Street at lunch time.

[Edited to add: I looked up the registration number, and found that this is a 1930 41/2 litre Bentley, which was first owned by Lord Doune.  It is unclear whether this was Francis Stuart, the 18th Earl of Moray, or his brother Archibald, the 19th Earl of Moray, both of whom were the right age to drive in 1930.  Doune Castle is near Stirling]

Hay Madrigals Concert

 "Celebrate the summer with glorious music" said the flyer - and it certainly was glorious.

The Hay Madrigals group consisted of four men and five women, accompanied by two violins, a viola da gamba (a sort of early cello) and a chamber organ - or a spinet in other pieces.  These were the instruments that Mozart had been writing for, as Lucy explained - she's the organiser of the group.

As the audience were settling down, there was music from the church organ, played by Barrie Magill.

They started with Mozart's Missa Brevis, or Short Mass, which was even shorter because they left out the Credo.  These are the pieces of music interspersed through a Mass, starting with the Kyrie Eleison (Lord Have Mercy) and finishing with the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).

They followed that up with a duet of Psalm 3, in which David is calling upon the Lord to save him, by Marcello.

This was followed by a Handel piece which was supposed to have solos from a bassoon and oboe - which they had not got, so they said they were sure Handel wouldn't mind if the bassoon and oboe parts were played by one of the violins and the viola da gamba!

They finished off the performance with a piece praising the Queen of Heaven by Aumann, who nobody had heard of - they thought the video of the performance would be the first on YouTube!  Because John Price was filming the entire concert.

After resounding applause (and an encore - the Queen of Heaven again), there was delicious tea and cake at the back of the church for the very reasonable sum of £3 - I had the chocolate orange cake.

The concert was free, but there was a retiring collection was in aid of the church building, which has such wonderful acoustics for performances like this.  I really thought there was a full choir singing, the sound was so rich and textured.

SOS River Wye Picture

 

Here's the picture that was shared on Facebook, by Friends of the Upper Wye, from the drone.  About 130 people made up the letters of the SOS, all of them either citizen scientists who have been testing the water of the River Wye, or other friends and helpers of the project.  I was there as blogger - I'm the one in black at the bottom of the 'O' nearest the camera.

On the way home, I passed Father Richard and his two poodles, on his way to the beach at the end of the gathering - I presume he'd been taking Evensong at 6pm, which was when the gathering at the Warren started.  He has his own project coming up about the River Wye, in August, so of course had an interest in what the citizen scientists are doing.

Gardening with Botany and other Stories

 

The new window display by Botany and other Stories has a gardening theme, and the quotation is by James Wong, presenter of Grow Your own Drugs on TV, panellist on Gardener's Question Time, and ethnobotanist.  I follow him on Twitter, and he's always interesting.

Hay Pride

 I couldn't go to the Pride event at Hay Castle on Sunday, because I was working, but I did wear my rainbow mask (bought from Golesworthy's) and all my Pride badges - rainbow, LGBT bought at Country Supplies, Ace flag, and Ace turtle - and one that said "Queer the Fiction: Write the Rainbow".  One lovely couple who had been at the castle admired the Queer the Fiction badge, and asked where I got it.

"WorldCon 2019 in Dublin," I said.

"Oh, you're just showing off now!" they laughed.

There was a big procession, with a Samba band, from the Globe to the Castle, and later there was Japanese Taiko drumming.  In the Castle grounds there were food stalls and market stalls, including one from Otherworldz at the Craft Centre, and there was music from local musicians throughout the day.  And a dog show, in which every dog was Best in Show.  There was also a panel on sexuality and gender in the education room of the Castle.  The day took a year to plan, and was organised by Graham Nolan and Helen Campbell, with compere Boo La Croux, local drag artist.

The Globe is continuing its support of the local queer community by offering a free monthly night for meeting, discussing various issues, and live music or discos.  

There will be another Pride event next year - I'm hoping to have the day off for that one!

Hay Madrigals

 More music at St Mary's Church on Saturday 18th June at 3.30pm.

Hay Madrigals will be singing Mozart's Missa Brevis, with other music by Marcello, Aumann and Handel.

The concert is free, with a retiring collection, and there will be tea and cakes afterwards.

SOS River Wye

 I went down to the Warren last night after work, because the citizen scientists who have been testing the water of the River Wye and its tributaries were gathering for a big photo opportunity.

Some people had come from the Pride event at the Castle.

One chap brought a coracle:

Others brought the equipment they use to sample the river water:

And here's the whole group of them waving their sampling tubes:

Then everyone took their places on a big SOS that had been marked out on the shingle, while a drone flew overhead to take pictures.  There were 45 people on the first S, 40 on the O (I was on the O), and I didn't hear how many were on the second S but it must have been a similar number.

A flyer was being handed out too, pointing out that existing laws should have protected the river.

This stretch of the River Wye is an SSSI - site of special scientific interest - and yet the statutory bodies are not doing anything to protect it, leaving it to volunteers to test the water.

Meanwhile, in the Golden Valley, residents are going to the Court of Appeal to overturn the Judicial Review decision which enables Herefordshire Council to continue to ignore the law protecting rivers.  They approved a planning application to expand industrial livestock production in the Golden Valley two years ago.  The River Dore flows into the River Wye.  Herefordshire Council did not carry out the Habitat Regulations Assessment before planning permission was granted, as they should have done, and are trying to argue that the River Dore is not within the Wye Catchment area.

If the Golden Valley residents win their case, this will mean that councils across the country will no longer be able to evade their legal duty to do HRAs, which could protect all our rivers.

Going to court, of course, is expensive, so they are crowd funding at https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/herefordshire-river-pollution/

Hay to Kington Run

 Yesterday, something like a hundred runners gathered at the Clocktower, to set off at 11am in the direction of Kington - a fifteen mile run!

It was quite impressive to see them all running across Hay Bridge and up the hill on the other side.

Sacred Spaces

 Alan from the Local History Society was going round with a plastic bag full of the new booklet compiled by the Brecknock History Forum, so I bought one (cost £5).

It's a list of 100 lesser known sacred spaces across Breconshire - they have included some interesting standing stones, as well as Christian places of worship, and they have also included places which have been demolished, and others that have been converted to other uses.  There are good photos for each entry.

Hay is represented by two entries around St Mary's Church - what is supposed to be an effigy of Matilda de Braos, and the Gwynne Memorial stone.

The entries are also marked to show the presence of ancient yew trees - a red label for a tree over 800 years old, and a green label for a 'veteran' tree of over 500 years old.

There are also maps to make it easier to find the churches, chapels and standing stones, together with map references and the What3Words code e.g. radiates.enthused.frog for St David's Church, Tirabad, the only Georgian Chapel in Wales.

I've been to quite a few of the places mentioned, back when I had access to transport and we went church hunting in our little blue van, but there are plenty of places here I didn't know about and would like to visit some time.

Portraits of Writers

 I went up to Hay Castle to see the first of their Art Exhibitions.

This one is in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, and was chosen by Dylan Jones.  The main exhibition is of seven women and seven men, with a bonus collection of portraits on an iPad - the pictures captioned in Welsh are first, followed by the same pictures captioned in English (or at least, that's the way I was able to make it work).  These portraits are from a book of 100 Writers for sale at Richard Booth's Bookshop, starting with Douglas Adams and Jane Austen, and including Keats, and Seamus Heaney, and JK Rowling.

I recognised the first picture in the exhibition, of Riz Ahmed, but not because he was a writer - he's also an actor, and he was in the Star Wars film Rogue One!

Most of the pictures were photographs (the one of Hilary Mantel was atmospherically blurry).

Edmund de Waal, who wrote The Hare with Amber Eyes, was sitting with some of his ceramics.

Tracey Emin (the artist who exhibited the infamous Bed) was dressed as the artist Frida Kahlo.

Owen Sheers was sitting out on Hampstead Heath.

The two biggest paintings in the exhibition are of Jan Morris the travel writer, and Salman Rushdie.

There were also pictures of Trevor Phillips, Jackie Kay the Scottish poet (I love her work), Sarah Waters who wrote Tipping the Velvet,  and Bernadine Evaristo (and three other people - next time I'll take a notebook and write down all the names!)

What I did notice was that most, if not all, of the writers are activists of some sort.  Trevor Phillips is perhaps the best known of these, for his work as the head of the Commission of Racial Equality. 

 Several of them are part of the LGBT+ spectrum - Jan Morris began life as James (and accompanied the 1953 Everest expedition - the mountain is in the background of her picture) and  Jackie Kay and Sarah Waters are gay.

There's also a strong Welsh connection.  Owen Sheers has written a lot about this area, for instance, and even Salman Rushdie was rumoured to be hiding out in a cottage in the Brecon Beacons when there was a fatwa out for his murder after he wrote The Satanic Verses.  Another part of the background of Jan Morris's portrait depicted Wales.

It was a fascinating exhibition, and well worth the £3 entrance fee.

Hay Music Concerts

 Hay Music put on two lunchtime concerts in St Mary's Church during Hay Festival, which were both sold out.

They're not resting on their laurels, though - on Friday 24th June there will be another concert at St Mary's.  The performers are the Tippett String Quartet, with Emma Abbate on piano.  Tickets cost £15, with under-25s £7.50.

They will be playing two piano quintets, by Robert Schumann and Elgar and the String Quartet No 5 by Michael Tippett.

The Tippett Quartet performs on Radio 3, and tours around the world, and Emma Abbate has also been heard on Radio 3 and at international festivals.

And finally, on Saturday 23rd July, Hay will have the chance to hear Llyr Williams play piano, also at St Mary's - this is a concert which has been postponed at least twice!  Tickets for this concert cost £17.50, or £8.75 for under-25s.

He will be playing Haydn, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Liszt and a piece from Tristan und Isolde by Wagner and Liszt.

More Expensive Laundry

 I went to the launderette in the middle of the Festival, to find that the price of a wash has gone up since I last went two weeks before.  It's now £5 for a standard sized machine, and £7 for a big machine.

I always take the correct change, so I had to ask around the other people in the launderette for an extra pound coin.

The dryers appear to be unchanged - I could still get my washing dry for 3 x 50p.

Falklands 40

 When I was walking through town at lunchtime, a big group of cyclists had gathered near the war memorial.  There was a trumpeter there, too, and someone was bringing a banner up.

The cyclists were wearing blue shirts with "Falklands 40" on them.

As this year is the 40th anniversary of the Falklands War, the bike ride has been organised in memory of the war and the fallen.

Yesterday, they started the cycle run from Cardiff to Brecon, and today they came through Hay.

Tomorrow they will be remembering the Sea King helicopter that crashed, killing twenty members of the SAS, as they cross Herefordshire.

On the fourth day they're visiting the RAF museum at Cosford, which has Harriers and Vulcans among their collection, both of which types of aircraft were used during the Falklands campaign.

The next day they're going to the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, and on the sixth day they'll be remembering the cyclists who died during the First and Second World Wars, finishing the day at the Falklands Arms pub for a beer to celebrate the Argentinian surrender.

There are two further days of cycling, finishing at the graves of some of the soldiers who died during the Falklands campaign, in Aldershot.

The cyclists are all veterans of the Falklands campaign.

Climate Choir

 I was asked to help out the Climate Choir by handing out leaflets when they sang in the Marquee at the Festival site on Saturday, and I had great fun doing it.

One of the stewards on duty said the singing was the most enjoyable he'd heard all weekend!

The leaflets contained handy hints on ways people can do things at home to reduce waste, and also to make their money count by moving their bank account to an ethical bank, encouraging use of public transport where possible, and supporting climate activists in calling for an end to fossil fuel subsidies, and a fast introduction of renewable energy.

Hay Festival has had a lot of events relating to climate change and sustainability, and what we can do about it, and there were stalls this year for the Woodland Trust, WWF, RSPB, and Greenpeace.  They also have a deposit return system for reusable coffee cups and bar glasses across the Festival site, and do a lot of recycling.  The electricity supplier for the Festival is Good Energy, which is 100% renewable energy.  

They have also partnered with the Woodland Trust and the National Trust to plant 30 acres of woodland.

The Climate Choir was one of three choirs giving free performances during that afternoon of the Festival.  The others were Cantorion Y Gelli, who were celebrating Welsh music, and The Hay Shantymen, singing sea shanties.

Street Food

 I've been indulging in some of the street food around town this week.  

I'd heard good reports of the Japanese stall outside Belmont House, but I haven't been by at the right time to try anything yet.

[Edited to add: I got up there at lunchtime on Saturday, and had a lovely meal with rice, pork and eggs]

The Kurdish-fusion food on Castle Street looked interesting, but everything seemed to have walnuts in it - I am not fond of walnuts.

Inside the Honesty gardens, though, I really enjoyed the Mexican stall.  I had the Mexican rice with garlic mushrooms, and it was delicious.

On another evening I went to the Hay Distillery stall and had their lamb koftu, which was also delicious.

Meanwhile, down at the Hay Distillery shop, next to the Cinema, the tables and chairs have spread across the grass beside the old Library, and they've opened up the little hatch in the side wall with a sign saying "Ring for Gin!"

Lighting the Beacon

 Three days of celebration began yesterday evening with the lighting of a beacon to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee outside the Castle gate, overlooking the square.

I wandered up about 9pm, when the sounds of a choir singing the Welsh national anthem were coming out of the speakers around the square.  Later they played a bit of Pomp and Circumstance and Land of Hope and Glory, but there was a real piper, who played a medley of tunes from the Castle steps, and the Hay Community Choir sang.

The local Scouts and Cubs were up there with their flags, as well as Gareth with the British Legion flag (which he held at attention for ages!).  There was also an adorable small child with toy bagpipes, who only just avoided tripping up over them and tumbling down the steps (he wasn't hurt).

George the Town Cryer was acting as master of ceremonies - he has a voice that can be heard across the square without amplification, after all, and he started the countdown to the time that the beacon was lit.

The new mayor was also there in her chain of office.

The original purpose of beacons was to be seen from afar, so that a chain of beacons could be lit to send a message, or raise the alarm.  This beacon could probably be seen from across the Wye Valley, if you were looking for it, but it was really a symbolic gesture, in the knowledge that similar beacons were being lit at the same time all over the country.

I had met a friend in the crowd that had gathered in the square, and we treated ourselves to a half of Jubilee beer from the Tudor Brewery, who were running a bar in the Cheese Market.  A group of us got together on the Castle steps, and we were among the last to leave, after the beacon had been put out and disassembled.

A Platinum Jubilee probably isn't going to happen again in the lifetimes of anyone who was there last night, so that was a little piece of history we were all involved in.

Today, there's a fun day happening at Brecon Road, and tomorrow there will be a fancy dress parade through town, starting from Cartref at 12.30.

Wandering Round the Castle

 This was my first opportunity to walk up the new Castle steps and through the medieval gateway.

Here's the view of the Market from the top of the steps:

Inside, the chairs were set out on the lawn for the Shakespeare performances that are taking place there this week.

Inside, the cafe was busy, and I found a book about Hay that I hadn't seen before in the gift shop - Real Hay-on-Wye, by Kate Noakes.  I'll read it soon and post a review.

Then I climbed all the way up to the viewing platform at the top of the tower - a fine view of all the tents in fields surrounding Hay, and the top of the Big Wheel and the Helter Skelter in the How The Light Gets In field near the Co-op.

The white doves are still there in the tower:

and here's a sculpted dove inside the Castle:

and a view of a lower part of the tower:

There's also an art exhibition in the Castle (tickets £3), but I'll wait until it's a bit quieter to see that.