HoodedHawk

Got up a little late, and got a late start (we made breakfast at 9:30, but didn’t get on the road until 11). I caught hell from the Lady for being “late”. I’ll do better.

Drove to Hay-on-Wye, the “town of books”. Took about 3 hours from Bath. The roads to Hay are “B” roads, and would be really fun on a motorcycle! The Lady and I split up (after having lunch at a cafe) and met back up at the cafe around 6.

Hay-on-wye has something like 40 bookstores in the small (~1500person) town. Richard Booth is the person who years ago bought Hay castle and decided to turn hay into the “Town of Books”. He has succeeded. :)

I didn’t really find anything there I wanted –> I visited the Bookstore in the Castle, Booth Books, and a number of others in the ~ 3 hours we were there. The vast majority of what I saw were either paperbacks or poor-quality hardcovers. I did ask about James Boswell and Thorne Smith in each store, but no one had any. Hay is the type of place you have to spend hours in any given store, hoping to find a jewel among the crap.

I didn’t.

I brought along an extra bag on this trip (empty) since I expected to be buying a lot of books. Ended up not buying a single book in Hay!

After Hay, we drove for about 4 hours to the BB in North Wales. Whoah! Quite a trip. I drove way too fast for the Lady, and she didn’t hesitate to let me know. Driving on the left is weird, but the Lady is my own Early Warning System, so we didn’t hit anything. When we got to Conwy (in Wales), we had dinner at “Alfredo’s Italian” restaurant. It was either that or an Indian place since everything else seemed to be done serving dinner. We made it “intact” (well, the vehicle did anyway) to the B+B about 10:30pm. Night Night.

Went to Stonehenge in the morning. It’s about an hour or so from Bath via car. It’s quite impressive, and they have roped it off so you can view it withough people climbing all over the stones. – the downside is that you can only get so close. It’s only a little 1-foot high rope surrounding the monument, so you are just on the honor system to not run up to the stones. There were a fair number of visitors when we got there, but all were behind the ropes. :)

After Stonehenge, we went down to Salisbury – by way of Amesbury. We stopped in Amesbury by accident, believing we’d reached Salisbury. Ooops. But since we were there, we went in and toured the Cathedral in Amesbury. Eventually we got to Salisbury and toured the Cathedral. We saw one of the 4 surviving copies of the Magna Carta (and the best preserved). It was written on a single sheet of vellum in Latin in 1215 AD. On the way back to Bath, we stopped by Avesbury to see the stone circle there. It’s much bigger (spread out over more area), and totally accessible – kids were climbing all over the stones and people were picnicing. Fun. Had a nice dinner at a pub in Amesbury (I had venison pie – yum!). When we got to Bath (~8pm) we went to the Roman Baths again to see them lit via torchlight. After the baths we stopped at “Lambergetta” pub (its theme being the Lambergetta scooter). Younger (good) crowd (20-30’s) there. Nice comfy leather couch to enjoy Guinness. Pubs tend to close at 11:00, so we trotted back to the BB and called it a night.

Arrive at Heathrow about 8am, and take a bus from Central Station to Bath (about 2 hours). Once in Bath, we have a hell of a time finding the National rental car place. I end up leaving the Lady to watch the bags at a random bus stop while I walk what turned out to be ~1.5 miles to the car place.

We get to Holly Villa B+B around 2 or so and take a nap. Got up and visited the Roman baths (for which Bath is famous), took a walk around Bath and had dinner at Huntsman Inn. Called it a night.

Holly Villa	Roman Baths