Sunday, July 08, 2007

V7.P2. South of Wales

It was a combination of first times: I have seen Alptekin for the first time in years, for the first time I had a long drive in the English countrysides, I've seen my first -proper- British gardens, and I've been to the Wales for the first time period.
I will do this tour with the help of photos, as Basak suggested (and because the photos are nice).
It was about books and it was about gardens.
First, the books: Hay-on-Wye (wikisays:)
often described as "the town of books", Hay-on-Wye is a small market town in Powys, Wales. It is on the River Wye, which is the natural and administrative border with England.

Hay-on-Wye is the UK's mecca for bibliophiles, boasting "thirty major bookshops"

trivia: On 1 April 1977, bibliophile Richard George William Pitt Booth declared Hay-on-Wye to be an independent kingdom with himself as its monarch. He sought publicity by declaring Hay an "independent kingdom" with himself as its king. The tongue-in-cheek micronation of Hay-on-Wye has subsequently developed a healthy tourism industry based on literary interests for which some credit Booth[2]. He recently announced plans to sell his bookshop and move to Germany; on this occasion Local MP Roger Williams was quoted as saying "His legacy will be that Hay changed from a small market town into a Mecca for second-hand book lovers and this transformed the local economy")





and then the gardens:




















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