Britain 09 - Day 31

Introduction

Today we headed to the town of Hay-on-Wye, famous for its bookshops. We spent quite some time in the shops, buying a few books and an old map of Rutland (buts that's another story). Then we headed north over the old toll bridge at Whitney on Wye to visit a few of the Black and White villages. These get their name from the recent habit of painting the oak timbers black and the wattle adn daub panels white. We drove through several villages - Eardisley, Kington, Eardisland, Dilwyn, and Weobley. At the first village we turned off to visit the Eardisley Oak or Great Oak, and oak tree reupted to be about 800 years old. We had visited some of these villages back in 2003 and we were struck by how run down the villages now looked. Most of the shops and a lot of the pubs were shut up, suggesting the tourists no longer visited the area. During the afternoon the weather grew darker adn the threatening cloud eventually produced rain. The weather seemed to add to the depression we sensed in these villages.