Wearied by the need for the tourist dollar and the concentration necessary to ignore every instinct you have about driving while simultaneously navigating this country's highways and country roads, we stayed in Bath for an additional night and I convinced Aidan that we needed to make a pit-stop in a legendary town- at least, legendary to a small group of book nerds- before returning the car to Nottingham and hopping on our flight to Dublin.
Hay-on-Wye is a tiny Welsh town home to DOZENS of second-hand and antiquarian book shops. If [stupid] RyanAir and their [stupid] luggage restrictions weren't lingering there in my next-few-hours-future, I would have stocked up.
Everywhere there's another book shop or stall. Even what's left of the castle has been turned into a home for books. Book shops are more of a 'purgatory' for books, but judging by the looks of things, I think a lot of specimens are there for good. This is for my fellow nerds (click on any picture for a larger view; that is, if you really need to see that marbled text block up close):
*I did buy a Dorothy Hughes book, long out of print that I've been searching for and some really beautiful old maps that if I can bear to cut will end up in some future book projects.
2 comments:
oh leah! i'm so jealous!
oh man shannon, it took levels of will-power i never thought possible to walk around this town.
you'd loooooove it!
Post a Comment