Father Richard Retiring

 Father Richard, at St Mary's, will be retiring next Easter - I hadn't realised that he had been here for 22 years!  

He's transformed the church while he's been here, with the magnificent organ, and the musical events that take place there - and, of course, the vastly popular showings of silent movies with Father Richard providing the musical accompaniment!

And even at the end of his tenure, there is a new venture.  Hay Forums will be starting in the church on Thursday 3rd August, at 6.30pm.  It's planned to be a monthly meeting with local speakers and musicians, on a range of topics including arts, travel, music, books and history.  The first event will be Aspects of Capel-y-ffin.  Diana Powell will be speaking about her novel Things Found on the Mountain, and Deborah Rose will be performing songs from her new album The Shining Pathway and Anam Cara.  Father Richard will be talking about the spirituality of Capel-y-ffin. Tickets are £5 on the door.

So Hay will be getting a new vicar, Father David Wyatt, who will also be the vicar for Llyswen, where they haven't had a vicar since the sad death of Rev. Ian Charlesworth.

Father David will be welcomed to St Mary's on Wednesday 2nd August, at 7pm, in a service taken by the Bishop.

He has been the curate at King's Pyon in Herefordshire, and the plan is for him to take over at Llyswen first, and then leave Llyswen to come to Hay, Llanigon and Capel-y-ffin when Father Richard retires.

[Edited to change the above - I thought he would be serving both parishes, but he's actually going to Llyswen first, and then leaving Llyswen to come to Hay.]

Jumble Sale in the Buttermarket

 Several local charities have stalls in the Buttermarket today.  Dial-a-Ride is selling plants, the Hay Theatre Group has a tombola, and other groups have a variety of knick nacks and clothes and so on.

The Keith Leighton Fund had the biggest collection of Hay-on-Wye souvenir items that I have ever seen!  Apparently they came from the collection of Neil Field (sadly missed).  There were little spoons, jugs and tea pots and mugs and plates and coasters, some with traditional Welsh ladies on them, others with the castle or views of Hay.  I bought these:

The letter opener and the spoon have a crest on them, of the castle, a plough and a scythe on a pale blue background and three emblems I can't quite make out on a red background.

I didn't notice the name of the group running the next stall I stopped at, because I was too busy looking at the sword:

 It's too bright to see, but the motto "The pen is mightier than the sword" is engraved along the blade.  It's purely ornamental - it's not a sharp blade, and it's obviously been in someone's shed for a long time, but it'll look fine after a bit of cleaning up.  A bargain for £5!

Arthur's Stone on the BBC

 Bone fragments have been found at Arthur's Stone!  It must have been just after we visited the site, and the dig is finishing now for the season.

One of the students found the cremated bone fragments (human bone) in a stone cist* which was part of the mound covering the monument.  It's very exciting, because actual evidence of burials or depositing human remains on the site are vanishingly rare.

The bones will be sent off to a specialist for analysis.

* A cist (or kist) is a stone box buried in the ground to contain human remains - bodies can be buried or cremated.  The one at Arthur's Stone was fairly small, and the remains were cremated.

Here's the link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-66246846?at_link_id=CB0482CE-26BE-11EE-84EA-181CD99D5CC3&at_ptr_name=facebook_page&at_medium=social&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_campaign_type=owned&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_link_origin=BBC_Hereford_%26_Worcester&at_link_type=web_link&at_format=link&fbclid=IwAR2hEDBepzAzxglueLEK3YACIHhTA7whb20pqy2b_BimkbjKlQT3ZihGHK0

Book Fair at the Castle

 I went straight from tea and scones at the Swan, after my trip out to Arthur's Stone, to change from my jeans into a skirt for the booksellers' reception at the Cinema Bookshop.  

The weather was just about good enough for us to hold it outside, and there was a mix of booksellers who had travelled to Hay for the book fair, and local booksellers - most of whom knew each other to some degree.  I ended up talking to some very interesting people.  One chap had come down from York, where he's renovating a historic building to be a bookshop (while running his business from another shop, so he can take the time to do the job properly).  A lady, the partner of another bookseller, was about to fly off to Bangladesh to look round factories for a clothing business.  There was a lot of checking of phones to see what the latest cricket scores were at Old Trafford, and quite a bit of discussion about the inner workings of the book fairs - with everyone in the group regretting the loss of the Bristol Book Fair because the building they held it in had been sold.

Greg, the manager, had got two of his grandchildren, and two other young teenagers who I assume were their friends, to act as waiters, in white shirts and black trousers or skirts, to take the trays of canapes around.  The snacks were being assembled at a table in the garage, by a couple who are chefs locally, and they were delicious!  Derek Addyman, one of our local booksellers, is a vegan, so they put together a special little tray just for him.

The wine flowed freely.

The following morning the Book Fair opened at 10am, so the booksellers had been there early to set up.  There were 18 of them, with the thought that, if the fair went well, they might come back and book enough space for 30 stalls.  Some of the big book fairs, like York, are in enormous halls, with 200 or so exhibitors.  

I went up there with Mary Fellowes, from Broad Street Books.  I'd thought that this was the first time a PBFA book fair had been to Hay, but she remembered the one in 1974*!  Derek Addyman had been to that one, too, as well as Greg from the Cinema and a couple of other people who are still around in Hay.

[*Edited to add: Should be 1984 - I saw Mary Fellowes, and she told me she had mis-remembered the date]

We chatted to the chap from Green Ink Books, who was one of the organisers, and he was very enthusiastic.  There were some lovely books on display, including one by April Ashley (signed!), and several others of local interest, including one by WET Morgan, who was once the vicar of Llanigon, and an active member of the Woolhope Club.

Arthur's Stone Visit

 I was invited to join a party of friends to do the guided tour of the Arthur's Stone dig yesterday.

We met at the Swan for lunch, in the garden.  One couple had driven up from East Sussex, and were meeting us on the way to visiting family in Presteigne, so they turned up a bit late.  We ate from the sandwich menu, and the portions were generous, and came with crisps, some of which ended up going to the blackbird who was hanging around watching us - who can't have been really hungry because we watched him wrestling with a huge worm when we arrived.  I had the pulled pork and mozzarella on ciabatta, which was delicious.  

Then we realised that nobody actually knew the route to the dig - I'd been before, but I only knew the bus route to get to the bottom of the hill, and Julia wanted to avoid driving up that hill if she could.  I was in the second car, following Julia, and we lost her at the Hardwicke turn into the Golden Valley, where she went straight on.  I guided the second car via the bus route, and we got to the dig a little bit late for the start of the tour.  Fortunately, Julia turned up shortly after  that, so we joined Amber from English Heritage, who was explaining what they found last year in the field below the monument before moving round to this year's trench.

The archaeologist in the picture is drawing a section of the dry stone wall in front of him, which was part of the monument.  Beyond him is the passageway into the main chamber of the tomb - the bit that looks like the Stone Table in Narnia (and CS Lewis did visit the site, so it had to have been his inspiration).

Another famous visitor I wasn't aware of was King Charles I, during the Civil War, when he used Arthur's Stone as a rallying point for his troops in the area - so it was a well-known landmark back then.  King Arthur, despite the name of the site, is not known to have been a visitor, and in any case he could only have visited it about 4,000 years after it was built.

The rest of the stones in the picture (I think I've got this right) are the remains of the collapse of the drystone wall, which was sealing off the passageway.  They think the passage way was quite a bit deeper than it now appears, and of course had capstones covering it, under an earth mound.  As it appears now, it would have been pretty difficult to get the remains of the dear departed into the main chamber, as anyone would have to crawl down the passageway.  However, the main stones are not being touched by excavation - the trench here is as close as the archaeologists are allowed to get.

One of the students on the dig had just completed emptying out this depression in the stones, which they think may have been a kist, or secondary burial within the mound, rather than depositing the remains in the main chamber.

Finds have been pretty rare, but they did find a piece of something that isn't quite obsidian, and which came from either Scotland or Northern Ireland, around the Giant's Causeway area, since it is volcanic rock in origin.  This is proof that people were moving around, and trading, over those distances.  They also found a rather nice flint arrowhead.

All the finds, from all the years of the digs, are being kept together, so they can be analysed at the end of the dig.

Across the road in the field there were two more trenches (one with a plastic pipe running through it!)  where the archaeologists were trying to find the extent of the monument.  There's a rise in the road as it passes the Stone, indicating that the monument may extend under the road, but they didn't know how far it might have gone.  Some similar sites are very big, so they were hoping to find an edge to it.

Further off in the field there was another, much deeper trench, cut through a depression in the field with parch marks, indicating that there was something underneath the grass.  This turned out to be small quarries of the same flat stones that were used for the drystone wall around the Stone.  There are small quarries all over the place locally, but this one was not marked on any maps, and there haven't been any finds yet to give a date.  However, any quarries from the Romans onward would have taken all the stone that was useable, whereas these quarries had a lot of stone left behind, as if they were choosing just the stones they could use for one project and rejecting the rest.

It was a fascinating tour, and Amber had a full schedule - earlier that afternoon she'd taken the Woolhope Group around (the Woolhope Group had a dig at the Stone in 1901, when regrettably vague notes were taken on their findings) and as we left, she was guiding another group around the site.

Then it was back to the Swan for tea and scones in the garden - a really enjoyable afternoon, with some lovely and interesting people!

Summer Show

 

I'm looking forward to the falconry at this year's Summer Show!

PBFA Book Fair at Hay Castle

 The Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association has been holding book fairs all across the UK for many years, and on Saturday 22nd July, between 10am and 5pm, they will be in Hay Castle for the first time!

18 booksellers from across the UK will be there, selling a mix of antiquarian and secondhand books.  

Entry is free.

Russell Brand's Community

 There's a festival going on across the river at the moment.

I have to say, the advertising for it passed me by, so I only knew it was happening when the tents started to go up.  

There was a festival last year, with Russell Brand as the main guest, and it was so successful that they're doing all again this year.  I've just been chatting to a neighbour, and she tells me that Russell Brand comes over as a really nice man in the flesh, and he's been wandering round the site chatting to people all weekend.  I've seen a few people wandering around town wearing plaited cords around their necks with a tassle, which I assume is something to do with the festival.

Also, it's apparently a vegan and alcohol-free festival - being all about wellbeing, spirituality, healthy living and our environment.  There's music, and yoga and meditation and massage on offer, as well as Brazilian jui jitsu, talks on everything from guerrilla gardening to sacred activism with Satish Kumar, stand up comedy with Paul Foot, ecstatic dance, circus events, and craft workshops. Omid Djalili, Wim Hof, Dr Vandana Shiva and Ryron Gracie are among the speakers.

Herefordshire Brewer of the Year

 Congratulations to Lucky 7 Brewery, who were declared Herefordshire Brewer of the Year at Beer on the Wye this year!

Now that they've crossed the border to their new premises, they count as a Herefordshire brewery, and the beer that won them the title was Beertrix Potter, a 4.3% dark beer brewed with cocoa nibs and vanilla.

Knitting at the Bean Box

 I got a message on Facebook yesterday morning from a friend who has just taken up knitting, and was in a bit of a pickle.  After warning her that I'm only at the Ladybird Book of Knitting stage myself, we agreed to meet up at the Bean Box, where she would treat me to a coffee.

It's been pretty damp over the last few days, and showery, which has made the garden at the Bean Box look really lush and green.  We took shelter in the undercroft of the house, that opens onto the garden.  It's a low arched room, now lined with bookshelves.  Tim the Gardener, who used to sell his books from the alley way entrance to the the garden of Tinto House, now sells from the Bean Box.  He's got an interesting and carefully curated collection of books there - he often buys from the outdoor bins at the Cinema Bookshop, and I always have really interesting conversations with him when I'm on the desk.  He has a huge knowledge of historic literature.

Tim's also taken over their garden - after he told Johnny, who runs the Bean Box, that  he was tired of walking past it looking so awful (I'm paraphrasing here!), when it should be a flagship for people entering Hay over the bridge.  His condition was that they wouldn't criticise anything he did!

Down the middle of the room is a long table with chairs, and we settled near the door, where the best light was, so we could examine the knitting.  She's starting with a scarf - and it's a patterned scarf, so she's leaping straight in with learning knit and purl in ribs.  We only had to undo four stitches at the end of a row - I'd taken my own knitting along so we used my spare needle to slip the stitches onto, and then she could finish the row.  

Then we had to work out how many stitches she was working with - the pattern said 16, and she obviously had far more than that in a row, but she couldn't remember how many her other friend, who had cast on for her, had started with.  Well, it was 46, and she was about four or five inches into the pattern, so that seemed a good number to keep to.  There were plain knitting rows in the pattern, so we decided it would be best to do a couple of plain rows and then get back to the ribs.  

It was really pleasant to be sitting there, looking out at the garden, and knitting in company.  I kind of miss Stitch and Bitch for that (the group stopped meeting over lockdown), and Catherine said she was really starting to enjoy the knitting while we were chatting together.  I think she'd been having to concentrate too much to relax to begin with - you do have to pay attention when you're starting out, and I could at least talk her through what to do when she made any mistakes, and reassure her that these things can usually be easily fixed.  

While we were there, several people came to browse the books, and stopped to chat, including a lovely Australian couple who are spending a month touring around the southern parts of England, mostly - the roads are a bit different to what they're used to in Australia!

So that was a really lovely start to my day, and I'm looking forward to seeing Catherine's scarf when she finishes it!

House Moving Anniversary

 It's exactly a year since I moved into my new place - and my old house is still standing empty.

Ticket Offices at Railway Stations

 There's a lot of concern at the moment about the news that ticket offices at railway stations are about to be closed across England.  A lot of this concern comes from disabled groups - it's already difficult for people who use wheelchairs, or are blind, to travel, since they often need assistance at stations, and where are they going to find staff if the ticket office is closed? 

Transport for Wales have said that they do not plan to close any ticket offices, which is a relief to me, because they are responsible for Hereford Station.  I always buy my tickets at the ticket office - it's easier for me than buying tickets online, and I usually get a better deal, and better advice on routes, than I would online, too.  

I've also been on journeys where trains are late, so I've needed to find out whether I will catch my connection, or change my route - and I need to be able to find a member of staff to do that.  (Travelling home from Lincoln to Hereford was an adventure I'd rather not repeat, even with the help of staff on the way!).  I'm able bodied and at least vaguely compos mentis, and I can find it difficult, so I have every sympathy with the disabled people who are protesting about this.

New Location for Lucky 7 Brewery

 The programme for Beer on the Wye this year had a section on local breweries - including the news that Lucky 7 brewery has moved across the border to Cusop!  They say it's on the site of the old railway station, so I went up to have a look.

I think the railway station was nearer to Hay and Brecon Farmers, and they're not there, so I went further along the road to Clifford, past the Co-op, and came to the industrial units....

So there they are, at Unit 4.

Graffiti in Hereford

 On the way to Beer on the Wye, I saw this graffiti on the wall of the car park:

"Cheap chicken (poo) is killing our River Wye"

(The graffiti is in chalk, so it'll easily wash off).

Just a reminder that the pollution to the river is still going on, with no signs of it stopping any time soon.

Beer on the Wye XVII

 Off to Hereford this afternoon for the first day of Beer on the Wye, and a lovely sunny day for it!

The bus got me to Hereford shortly before one, and Beer on the Wye opened to the general public at 2pm, so I had time to take some stuff to a charity shop (I usually go to the RSPCA, as it's close to the bus stop where I get off), and find something to eat before I started drinking.  I found a little crepes stall just inside the entrance to the Market - I just had a plain one with lemon and sugar to try it out, and it was delicious.

I do not have a large capacity for beer these days, so my approach has to be pretty well targetted.  So although there were over 149 different draught ciders on offer, 90 of them from Herefordshire, I wasn't going to try any of them - or the 53 World Beers, partly because I am very much out of practice at knowing what the different beer styles are like.

That leaves the 134 beers, so there was plenty for me to choose from.  I was drinking thirds, too, so I could try as many different beers as possible over the afternoon.

As soon as I stepped into the marquee, I spotted the barrels of Uley beer.  I have happy memories of a CAMRA coach trip to the Uley brewery, which ended with the brewer playing his accordion while we sang, so I started off with the excellent Old Spot, a 5% ruby ale  (several of my choices were on the strong side).

Also at that end of the bar was Jaipur, from Thornbridge, which I'm pretty sure I remember winning best beer of the Festival a few years ago - this one is a Pale Ale, very well hopped, and 5.9%.

After that I was in the mood for something completely different - Moonraker Mild, from Empire brewery in Huddersfield, which was only 3.8%, and not hoppy at all.

My fourth choice was a porter from a brewery called Wildcraft in Norwich.  It was flavoured with cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, and my mouth went 'Wow!'  It was also 5%, and my favourite of this year's Festival.

Finally, I'd noticed a new distillery housed in an old toilet block near the swimming baths on my way into Hereford.  This is Goldenwake Distillery, and they had provided a barrel of Honey Ale, which is technically a mead made with hops!  It's 4.4%.  I tend to think of Moniak Mead as the gold standard of meads, and this one was quite a bit lighter than that, but very thirst quenching, and I would certainly try it again.

By that time, I was sharing a table with a retired truck driver and his friend who had come down for the day on the train from Birmingham - I took my own stool, which was a wise move.  We had a very pleasant conversation about the beers.  One of them was enjoying Absolutely Cherried, a cherry porter from 4TS brewery in Warrington, and the other was enjoying the dark mild from Bank Top in Bolton.

According to Mark Haslam's introduction to the programme (he's the Festival Co-ordinator), this might be the last Beer on the Wye to take place by the Rowing Club.  There's a scheme afoot to develop the riverside, and if it goes ahead there won't be room for the beer festival's marquee!

The Festival continues this year over the weekend, with a variety of bands on Friday and Saturday evenings, and Hereford Big Band, playing music of the 1930s and 40s, from 2pm on Sunday afternoon.

Shakespeare at the Castle

 It's going to be a weekend celebrating the Bard at the Castle.

On Friday 7th, at 7.30pm, the Amarylli Duo will be in the Great Hall of the Castle, singing and playing a programme of Shakespeare's Musicke.  Hannah Grove is the soprano, and Elizabeth Pallet plays lute and theorbo.  Tickets are £15, or £7.50 for under 25s, and there is also the chance to have a pre-concert supper at the Castle cafe from 6.30pm.

Then on Sunday 9th, at 5pm, the Willow Globe Theatre will be performing The Merchant of Venice on the Castle Lawn.  Tickets are £15 or £7.50 for under 16s, and bring your own seat!

Also at the Castle on Saturdays from 11am to 1pm in the Great Hall, there's the chance to add a few more stitches to the Friendship Quilt, which has been made in collaboration with the refugees who are being helped by Hay, Brecon and Talgarth Sanctuary for Refugees.