I've been looking through all the pictures I took this year around Hay, and I think this one sums up the year the best. It's the citizen scientists who have been testing the waters of the River Wye to campaign for it to be cleaned up, taken on the beach at the Warren:
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As is tradition, I went for a long walk on Christmas Day - or at least, longer than I have been managing in the last few months. I'm a bit out of practice, so I only got as far as the waterfall at Papermill Cottage in Cusop Dingle.
(Basil Brush was safe, though - I took him into work with me!)
According to Welsh Water's website, the milky water some of us have been getting is safe to drink - it's caused by tiny oxygen bubbles.
The brown water isn't so nice, and a lot of people still don't have any water at all.
Water is off across the whole area - my boss who lives in Clifford was filling containers at work this morning, and even in Hay the water was looking rather brown for a while. There's also no water in Clyro, Llanigon, from Longtown to Peterchurch, Cusop and Dorstone and Hardwick, according to people checking in on the Community Facebook page.
Apparently, Welsh Water hasn't been able to say how long the problem will last. On their website is a message saying that the burst water mains are due to the sudden change in temperature between the last few very cold days and the much milder weather now.
It's not just in this area, either - they're talking about problems in Ceredigion, and they've been giving out bottled water at Newcastle Emlyn and Llandysul.
It's been a good weekend for craft stalls. They were crammed in everywhere at the Castle - the entrance hall, up on the balcony above that, and in the Clore Learning Room - leather goods, wood, wreaths, tie dye clothes, paper bunting, art, jewellery and lots more. In the corner of the entrance hall while I was there, three chaps with guitars were performing (I intended to go back for the Village Quire, but was too tired in the end).
Down in town, the Buttermarket and Cheesemarket were full as well - baskets, blankets, cider, Antur Brewery, and lots more.
It seemed fairly busy - I hope they did well!
[Edited to add: Santa and some elves have just passed by, in a trailer drawn by a decorated car - they're going all round the area to wave at children (and anyone else!)]
The Cinema Bookshop Christmas party was at the Three Tuns this year.
We were a bit late to start because Greg had been to the school performance of Aladdin - I think I gathered that one of his grand children had been a handmaid to Princess Jasmine. We started off the evening with drinks from the bar - I tried the Wye Valley Nutcracker, which is this year's Christmas beer from the brewery, and very tasty it was, too.
Then we were seated in the back room around a long table - a bit cold occasionally when the patio doors opened, but that didn't happen very often.
About half of us had soup for starters - carrot, honey and ginger, with a swirl of creme fraiche and home made bread. It was delicious! The rest of the table had the prawn cocktail, which was enormous, and came with a spicy sauce. We ordered a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white wine to share, though some people were still sipping their gin and tonics from earlier, and others stuck to lager.
For the main course we went for either turkey or beef, with lots of vegetables, including cauliflower cheese. We got extra gravy too. By this time we had pulled our crackers, which contained a rather small paper crown and several cards with party game ideas and jokes and trivia (apparently Japan has square water melons). It was a bit too noisy in the bar for the "hum a famous tune" party idea, but there were some book related questions which we gave intentionally wrong answers to.
I was the only person to stick with tradition and have Christmas pudding, which was lovely. Other people had panna cotta or chocolate and hazelnut cheesecake, and Deb went for the cheeseboard. The sweets were laid out beautifully on rectangular black plates, decorated with little pieces of fruit and dusted with icing sugar.
We waddled out of the pub at the end of all that! I only had a little way to walk, but others live further away, so a taxi was waiting for them.
It was a very enjoyable evening, and I didn't feel hungry until the following lunchtime!
Hay Castle is going to be busy over the weekend - they're holding a Christmas Fayre on 17th and 18th December, and the Snow Queen is going to make an appearance!
Also making an appearance will be the Village Quire. They will be singing carols at 5.30pm, after a lunchtime concert at St. Mary's, Brecon.
Today there was snow, so it seemed like a good idea to mention the useful leaflet that has been printed by Hay Festival, giving details of all sorts of help available in Hay this winter.
First of all, for people who need help but don't know how to get it, Helen Quinlan is the PAVO Community Connector, and she visits Hay Library on the first and third Thursday of each month between 10.30 and 11.30, as well as being available by phone on 07599 110 315 or 01597 828 649.
For the Herefordshire side of the border, there's the Herefordshire Talk Community Helpline on 01432 260 027.
Dial-a-Ride provides local transport all year round - it costs £10 to become a member, with trips starting at £2 - and they'll even deliver prescriptions.
Hay Youth Club provides free activities and free hot dinners for school years 7 to 13 (ages 11 to 18), every Tuesday in term time from 6.30 - 8.30pm at the Pavilion on Brecon Road.
Hay Library is a warm space (with lots of books, and free Wifi).
The Hay Repair Cafe will fix things for free - small electrical items, textiles and clothing, and they'll even sharpen knives. They're open from 11am to 2pm on the last Saturday of every month at the Pavilion on Brecon Road - contact hayrepaircafe@gmail.com
Bethesda Evangelical Church has free activities for all ages, including a Baby and Toddler group, Tea and Chat, and Crafts. They also provide a free Community Meal, to eat there or take home, every Thursday at 6pm. Contact Jane Dodds on 07758 318 772 for more details.
Zero Waste Hay has a table at the Cheese Market on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10am with free food for whoever comes along - this is usually stuff the Co-op can no longer sell, which would normally go to landfill, but someone brought walnuts from their tree last Friday, and someone else brought apples, so there's always something different.
Advicelink gives help applying for welfare benefits and other Government support. For Wales the number is 0808 250 5700 and for England the number is 0800 144 8848.
Age UK gives free home energy checks for the over 65s, and can help with fitting draft excluders and so on. For Powys contact 01686 623 707 and for Herefordshire the number is 0800 008 6077
Susie Wood is the Energy Advocate for Powys, who can help with managing energy debt, find the best tariffs, and help with energy efficiency. Her email is advocate@severnwye.org.uk
There are food banks in Brecon and Hereford, but people need to be referred to them. In Hay this can be done through Haygarth Surgery, Hay Primary School, Dial-a-Ride, any of the churches, and a variety of other organisations.
And if you need to talk, there's always the Samaritans on 116 123.
Powys also has a website to provide help at powys.gov.uk/costofliving
and Herefordshire has something similar at talkcommunity.org
Also mentioned on the weekly rundown, on the back page of the leaflet, is the Mothers Union, which meets on the second Tuesday of each month at Cusop Village Hall from 2 - 4pm, for tea, chat and guest speakers.
The British Legion also has Tea and Chat from 11am - 2pm on the third Thursday of each month
and St Mary's Church in Cusop has a Tea and Chat at Cusop Village Hall on the fourth Sunday of each month from 3 - 4.30pm.
Some stalls were still setting up when I went round town this morning. There are 60 traders today, in the Memorial Square, down by the Clock Tower, in the Buttermarket and the Cheese Market, and in the Castle Gardens. They're selling high quality gifts - wooden bowls and spoons, vintage garden tools, antiques, woollen goods, beer and gin and cider and smoked meats and bread, and even horse bridles.
I did like the name of one stall - Emily Found A Thing. I asked if they were Bagpuss fans, and he was delighted that I'd recognised the reference. They've come all the way from Ludlow and, like Emily and the toys in Bagpuss, they take old, broken things and transform them into something beautiful.
I went to the Zero Waste stall today at 10am. There were two tables today, with quite a lot of fresh fruit that needed using up.
In an effort to control the queue, Zoe was giving everyone a number as they arrived - and then she came round with an Advent calendar, and let each of us open the door for our number, which was a lovely little treat!
The Parish Hall was packed when I got there - they'd laid out chairs for 52 people, and over 100 turned up! There was also mulled cider being sold at the back at £3 a Green cup, proceeds going to Friends of the Upper Wye, who organised the evening.
The main speaker was Oliver Bullough, and the subject was the possibility of getting the River Wye at the Warren designated for bathing status.
The various statutory bodies which are supposed to monitor the cleanliness of our rivers are not doing their jobs. In fact, the funding to enable them to do their jobs has been drastically cut over the past few years, just as the discharge of sewage into waterways by water companies has increased. I wasn't quick enough to note down all the numbers, but Oliver mentioned sewage discharges at Glasbury and Talgarth, and in Hay sewage was discharged into the Wye for 559 and a half hours over 183 days. This is a huge amount, and certainly not in "exceptional circumstances" as the law states.
Partly because of this, and partly because of the worries about all the chicken farms in the Wye watershed, there is now a network of around 200 volunteer citizen scientists testing the water all along the Upper Wye, doing the job that the statutory bodies are failing to do. They are testing for phosphates and nitrates - so for the sort of pollution caused by chicken farms and manure washing into the river because of agricultural practices. That's because it is cheap and easy to test for these things.
Applying for designated bathing status wouldn't do anything to change the appearance of the Warren. Nor, Oliver believes, would it attract more visitors to the Warren, which is already listed in all the Wild Swimming books and websites anyway. What the designation does mean is that Natural Resources Wales would have to test the quality of the water throughout the bathing season (basically over the summer months), publish the results, and take action to improve the quality of the water if the quality is poor.
This doesn't only benefit swimmers, but also fishing, canoeists, walkers and wildlife. Hay depends on tourism, and a clean river can only help in that regard.
Also, by designating Hay as the spot to be tested means that all the river above Hay into Wales will have to be clean too.
The Welsh government are keen to designate bathing spots, and both Jane Dodds, MS, and MP Fay Jones are in favour of keeping the river clean. Aubrey Fry, who owns the land opposite the Warren, is also in favour, but the Warren Trust itself has members who are doubtful. They are worried about their legal liability in case of accidents.
(This has come up before with the Warren Trust. I can't remember which group it was now, but a local group wanted to hold a mass picnic on the Warren, possibly with a few people providing music with guitars, and they were told they had to take out public liability insurance. All they wanted to do was what members of the public do on the Warren anyway, just all together on a specific afternoon. The event never took place.)
Oliver said that the bathing designation would make no difference to the legal liability of the landowners. He also said that the landowners' permission was not needed to apply for the designation.
In the question and answer session, Oliver went into more detail about what Natural Resources Wales would be required to test - they test for two bacteria, one of which is e.coli and I missed the name of the other one. These bacteria can come into the river from manure or septic tanks.
The legislation on water quality was originally EU law, but since we are no longer in the EU, it was brought into UK law before Brexit happened. Mostly the legislation has been used to clean up beaches, but Ilkley and a section of the River Thames have also been designated so far.
He was asked why the Friends of the Upper Wye want to take this particular course of action to clean up the river - and it seems to be the only tool that exists to force the statutory bodies to act. If they don't take action, legal action can be taken against them.
The Friends of the Upper Wye have already been collecting data on the numbers of bathers, paddlers, canoeists, fishermen, dog walkers and others who use the Warren, so all that evidence is ready to be presented to the Welsh government.
Apparently Welsh Water is happy for bathing designations to go ahead, but on lakes and reservoirs rather than rivers, which prompted the comment from a member of the audience that people aren't supposed to swim in reservoirs anyway!
Usually it is local government that applies for the designation, but Oliver has been trying to get hold of someone in Powys County Council for a year now without success. This seems very familiar to me from the days when I went to the Town Council meetings - it was incredibly hard for them to get Powys County Council to do anything!
A chap from the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales was there, and he said that CPRW will back the Friends of the Upper Wye. They have also been funding some of the citizen science. He was the one who made the point about the massive funding cuts that have made it impossible for the statutory bodies to do their job properly.
The news story about all the dead fish in the River Llynfi was mentioned. When the tester finally arrived at the scene, it was too late to test the water - it had all flowed away down the Wye. He was late to the scene because he had been in North Wales, testing at another incident - and he was the only tester for the whole of Wales! The fish in the Llynfi were never tested to see if they had been poisoned or whether they had died of oxygen depletion in the water.
Asked why the citizen scientists didn't test for e.coli, it was pointed out that the tests are quite expensive, and volunteers shouldn't be expected to take on that sort of expense. Also, Natural Resources Wales can choose to ignore tests that are done by other bodies.
At the end of the meeting, a show of hands was asked for to see whether there was enough support for Oliver to continue to try to get bathing designation for the Warren. Sean O'Donoghue was against, on the grounds that what was needed was a complete change of government, but nearly everyone else was in favour.
The Friends of the Upper Wye are also crowd funding at the moment for a Manager, so that there can be one person co-ordinating their efforts rather than a group of busy people trying to fit it in around their day jobs.
Lucky 7 brewery in Hay have brought out a special ale.
To quote the label: "On the 1st of April 1977, Richard Booth proclaimed Hay an 'Independent Kingdom' with himself as King. To celebrate home rule for Hay, Monty Python's Terry Jones brewed the first Independence Ale. In 2019 we sadly lost our King, Richard Booth, and also in early 2020, Terry Jones. This beer has been made as a homage, with very carefully selected local Herefordshire hops, malted grains, and yeast."
The hop varieties are Emporer, Jester and Harlequin. The beer strength is 4.6%, and it's full of flavour.
The label has a crown and a jester's hat, which seems fitting for the reign of King Richard.
Also, it's a Vegan friendly beer.
I went into Hereford last week, and I had thought I might get some cash out of Lloyds Bank while I was there. The cash machines are inside the branch - and the door was locked.
I went to the main entrance, and that was locked too. Odd, I thought.
So when I was back in Hay, I looked at the bank website to see why the branch was closed. It didn't say.
I tried contacting the bank via the website. There was a list of questions to ask, but why a particular branch was closed was not included. I tried writing in a question, and got back an answer about Covid precautions, which is not what I had asked about at all.
So, how else could I contact the bank?
I remembered that they have a Twitter account, and will answer questions there.
So I asked.
They didn't know.
I found an article in the Hereford Times which told me more than the bank did. Apparently, work was going on to put a new safe in, and to remove some of the customer service counters, and two of the ATMs.
I kept asking the bank when the branch would reopen, once a day.
On the fourth day, I started to wonder about how the bank is organised - surely someone at Head Office would know that a major branch was closed, and why? The manager of the branch wouldn't have just decided to close on their own. I imagined the manager of a branch clearing out the safe and fleeing to the South of France - from the response I was getting, the Head Office wouldn't find out about it for weeks!
On the morning of the sixth day of asking, I finally got an answer!
The bank is due to re-open on Tuesday, December 20th - just in time to close again for Christmas!
All this emailing to and fro could have been avoided if someone at the branch had thought to sellotape a notice to the door.
[Updated to add: whoever is responsible for the Twitter account helpfully sent me a link to find the next nearest branch - of the Halifax! So I assume from this the Twitter account is outsourced to people who are not part of Lloyds Bank. When I queried this, I got the right link]
