June 22 and 23,, Hay-on-Wye

 Perhaps you know or maybe you don't that Hay on Wye is a major book capitol in the world.

Its twin is kind of far away:

    

Hay is a cutsie town that does not have a fruit/vegetable store and only one mediocre grocery a half mile out of town (see expulsion from which in yesterday's post).  But it does have lots of things having to do with books, including this clever book shelf-store sign:

If you would expect a cutsie town to have stores with cutsie names, you would not be disappointed:

      

Ewe would expect this store to specialize in fine, wool items:

But it really didn't.

There are artsy stores:

And a candle shop; no Shabbat candles (but you could make do so long as the tapers burned the requisite number of hours):

I got a good view of all the shoppes because I took a tour about town at about 7:00 a.m.

This was essentially a rest day, because, as I said, I was plum tuckered out by the demands of recent days and even though there are some gorgeous walks around here in the mountains, I just needed to refuel, so I opted for about thirteen miles of easy river walking.

The first river walk might have followed the river, but  you'd never know, except for this little crossing, 

which I think was not the Wye at all but just a little stream.

The walk was mostly through grazing fields.

and fields of growing things like this pea or peapod field:

I nibbled a couple of the peapods and they were quite tasty.  Just a couple!!

As I approached a style, out of nowhere a bunch of cows started toward me:

Then they conferred:

But I was safely on the other side of the style by then.

The second walk WAS by the river.  Even though it was only about 61degrees and quite windy, there were kids playing in the water:

I do feel kind of bad that I did not do part of the ODP walk I skipped—I was thinking of fourteen miles: seven out and seven back, but that would have been all uphill one way and all downhill the other, so the river won out.  By tomorrow, all will be forgotten!