The Wye Must Not Die!

 It was market day yesterday, and I got to the square just as George the Town Crier welcomed all Hay's visitors, in Welsh and English.  

There's a new comic/graphic novel stall, with some very impressive stock - including Sandman (by Neil Gaiman - a brilliant run of comics turned into a series of graphic novels).  I stopped to chat to the stall holder, Lauren from Indiana, who now lives in Hay.

Next to the comic stall was a table manned by a chap who comes into the Cinema Bookshop regularly - he was once a sailor on a tall ship which I visited (I had the sweatshirt for years), the Maria Assumpta, and he's now involved with the campaign to save the Wye.  He was selling copies of a book edited by Father Richard, called Heavens Above!  The Wye Must Not Die!  It's about the pilgrimage Father Richard organised where a wooden statue of Our Lady was floated down the Wye.  

He's got some very impressive contributors to the book.  Rowan Williams wrote the Foreword.  Local bookseller Anne Brichto wrote the chapter on Judaism and Water (her father was a rabbi who also wrote books).  There are two chapters on Islam and Water by contributors I don't know, Mahmoud Mussa and Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, and a chapter on the eastern Orthodox tradition of water by David Williams.  Then Helen Scott writes about the local churches of Capel-y-ffin, Llanigon and Hay, Rachel Jenkins writes about the pollution in the Wye and Philip Chatfield writes about the creation of the sculpture of the Virgin Mary.  The last two collaborated with Father Richard Williams in the editing of the book.

Part two describes the journey down the Wye, with beautifully drawn maps, and there are also lots of photos.  The watercolour on the back of the book is from a famous painter of railway posters in the 1950s, Jack Merriott.  

Buying the book contributes to the restoration of the River Wye, and the citizen scientists who are testing the water quality.

(apart from the stall on the market, I'm not sure where the book is available, but I'm sure Father Richard Williams of St Mary's, Hay, will be able to help if anyone wants to contact him).