Every year (sometimes twice a year) my parents go to a small camp site just outside Rhyader, usually for a bank holiday weekend. This time we went with them. Some friends of the family who were already there and the plan was to meet up with them.
Phoneing up the camp site before hand we heard that it was very water-logged and that they had even shut down some of the site due to it being so wet. The weather forcast said that it would rain on the Thursday, but that it should be better on the Friday, and Saturday should be much better.
When we got there it was wet, and due to the activity of people walking about it was also very muddy. We booked until Sunday just in case the rain didn't stop. Not being perturbed we set up our tents and hoped that there would be no more rain for a couple of days. It was muddy enough that some people went into town and bought wellington boots just so that they didn't have to stand ankle deep in mud. I stayed in my trusty walking boots, which now need a good wash!
No such luck on hoping it wasn't going to rain! It was sunny for just long enough on Friday night and Saturday to lull us into a false sense of security. By dinner time on Saturday it was raining quite steadily and any drying out that had been done was basically wasted. The ground just got wetter and wetter until everything we did or owned was just caked in mud.
Anyway, I had the plan that we would go Hay-on-Wye at some point during the weekend, so we went there on Saturday. We eventually decided that Mandy and I should go and Matthew would stay behind and go to the Rhyader "fun day". Apparently the fun day wasn't all that fun, and consisted of a few giant games (like a large connect four) and was very "small town" if you know what I mean.
For those of you who don't know Hay-on-Wye is a town that has more book shops (mainly second hand) per mile than just about anywhere else on the face of the Earth. Just walking around it for a while you are hit by the amount of books that are present in the town. There are millions! Mandy and I went there with a certain number of authors in mind, but unfortunately found nothing. I was a little disapointed, but I realised that there are a few reasons why I didn't find what I was looking for.
- There are a lot of books. So therefore asking if anything is there just gets you blank looks. Most shop owners don't know what they have in their stock, just due to the numbers of books there, but also due to the fact that lots of books also come in.
- Looking through each bookstore takes a while and different stores have different ways of stocking and categorising books. I didn't have all week to look through every store, but you could easily do that.
- I assume that, although there are books coming in to the shops, there are a lot of people walking around and buying them. So the good and popular books go quite quickly and so finding them can be a little tricky.
It would be nice to go camping and it not rain and spoil things. I'm thinking that we should just book ourselves into a hotel next time.