rm | the St Davids and Hay-on-Wye (Reply)

Where we've been for the last two days -- the St Davids Hotel and Spa at Cardiff Bay and the town of Hay-on-Wye in the Brecon Beacons:

From our balcony at the St Davids.

Also from balcony at the St Davids.

And one more from our balcony at the St Davids. Despite the fact that I really, really haven't been in a fanfiction place, and especially not a Torchwood fanfiction place, this whole experience was more than slightly weird. I'm not sure the hotel ever features by name in the actual show, but it sure does come up all the time in fanfic (and related RPF), and the first 90 seconds of being in there as we were trying to get through check-in was pretty explosively weird. Then it was just awesome (the spa is DIVINE), but still occasionally weird: being an actor I tend to find narrative through the first person, even if I usually write in the third, and it's fair to say I had a moment or two.

But nothing, NOTHING, was as funny as this art in the bathroom. Which I think all of fandom MUST know about immediately and incorporate into all their random stories that involve this hotel.

*

Then we were off to Hay-on-Wye, bookstore town. To get there, we took a train to Hereford (that's three syllables, which clearly accounts for what feels like to me a missing syllable in Gloucester) and then a bus to Hay. This was easy, more or less, but wow that bus to Hay really seems to go through the complete middle of nowhere (I understand "Countrycide" much better now) in a two-way roads with only one lane fashion, and I spent most of the journey worrying if we'd know the place when we got there.

And when I say bookstore town, I mean bookstores, EVERYWHERE, including outside, in all weather (which, I should note has been mostly grey, very cold, and completely jarring to me since it gets dark so much earlier here than in NYC). Here we have some ivy growing in a book sales shed.

It's also one of those old stone places with lots of vines and moss, which is fun for me since my main interests in taking photos is architecture, decay and juxtapositions of technology and nature. Also: Patty.

This building disturbed Patty and I, since it was clearly open to the elements and abandoned. With the 4's painted on the door, we felt like it looked as if it had been searched for plague victims.

More with the vines and the leaves.

Cat in one of the bookshops. This may be the platonic ideal of cat photos.

I loved this one little table. It was for the cafe across the street -- and we totally saw people choose to eat outside, in the significant cold, to eat at this table that didn't really seem attached to anything.

Behold the sheep on the hill behind the house and the power of my zoom lens.

Shot from the Hay castle, over the town, towards the valleys in the three hours of sun we had all weekend.

I could shoot photos of ~~power~~phone lines and clothes lines in the UK ALL DAY LONG.

Made of stone. Full of books.

Sign for the Blue Boar pub. Blue Boar!

Patty sits on some books to read some books at our B&B.

Waiting for the bus back to Hereford.

More with my obsession with the ~~power~~phone lines while waiting for the bus.

Leaving Hay.