The Farm Focus column was talking about lambing, and the Local Interest Group had visits to the castle at Llandeilo Graban and Cefnige Mill. The chairs were arranged in a circle, and the meeting started with everyone introducing themselves and saying a few words about why they were there. The structure of the meetings is important to Extinction Rebellion as part of what they call Regenerative Culture. It's also why the organisation is as non-hierarchical as they can manage to make it. We were also introduced to the idea of hand signals to make commun Outside the marquee there were food stalls selling a vast variety of take away food - Indian, goat curry, Parsnip-ship's organic and vegetarian food, Welsh pizzas, mulled wine, and more. Owen Sheers said that the play was intended as a kind of haunting, so that Keith Douglas would be remembered, even though his published work fell into obscurity after the war. If he had lived, he could have been one of England's foremost poets of his generation. A friend asked for a bit of help in researching the Forty Martyrs - Catholic saints who had been executed in England for their faith in the 16th and 17th centuries. I was already familiar with several of them - St Nicholas Owen, who built priest holes where the persecuted priests could hide from the authorities, for instance and, because we share a name, St Edmund Arrowsmith, who came from Lancashire.

They had a table with a few leaflets on it - not many because it was windy and they didn't want them to blow away.

It starts on Thursday 28th November and goes on until Sunday 1st December, and is the more intimate, smaller version of the main, summer Hay Festival. Venues are a 500 seater tent on the Cattle Market (the Baillie Gifford tent), St Mary's Church and the School Hall. The day was quite overcast, so my photo is quite dark. There was a late medieval hall there, followed by the farmhouse which was built between the 15th and 17th centuries, with additions built in the 18th and 19th centuries. The most famous resident was William Watkins, a Parliamentary officer in the Civil War, who probably built the original farmhouse that replaced the hall. He held Puritan meetings in the farmhouse, and later local Non-conformists worshipped at a specially built Meeting House (now part of the holiday cottages). The "Llanigon church" was even mentioned in the House of Commons in 1646, in a sermon by Walter Cradoc, who said that "the Gospel has run over the mountains between Breconshire and Monmouthshire as the fire in the thatch." They are also looking for interesting fabrics to make the costumes from, especially things like velvet, satin, cotton and braids and trims suitable for noble clothing, in rich and natural colours. They will need to be hard wearing because of the handling by the public that they will receive, and machine-washable.

When Captain's Walk was renovated a plaque was put up to commemorate the person who first created the Walk - Captain Thomas Phillips of Havard House, Brecon (more recently the Ursuline Convent). The plaque said that Captain Phillips was the author of A Journal of a Voyage Made in the Hannibal 1693 -94 to Africa and Barbadoes. I’ve got a supplier of nice hay, just trying a few bales before buying a load, but there’s mites on them. Hold your bare arm on the bale for 10 seconds and 3 mites will crawl onto you. Some pink, some white/cream coloured. So I had two very enjoyable meals, and several people I was eating with said that they'd like to come again to sample the ordinary menu - the Three Tuns specialises in Italian food.

About Me

First was Cathedine Church, just at the bottom of the drive. It was interesting that two of the houses next to it were called The Towers and Tower House, though we couldn't see a tower. We managed to find a place to pull in to park - sadly for the church, there seems to be no place for cars to park to get to it. Someone is still maintaining the churchyard - the paths were mown, but the latest grave there we could see was dated 2003, and someone had chalked "Please Help Save Our Church" on the front step. Broad Street Book Centre is unique in that it houses a number of different independent bookshops. In fact, there are almost twenty little bookshops in this building. I remember belly dancing demonstrations, in the middle of the tiny bar - which also featured in Dandelion Dead, which was filmed in Hay in 1994. Just about the only thing they did to change it for the filming (which was set in 1923) was to take out the 1970s broken games machine. The Green Transport Action Plan is part of the Low Carbon Hay Steering Group, which was set up by the Town Council after they declared a climate change emergency. There are eight different topic areas, all with the aim to reduce the area's carbon footprint by 2030. They include: reducing business energy use, reducing domestic energy use, planting trees, working with Hay School and local secondary schools, transport, and supporting Plastic-Free Hay. I could spend hours and hours wandering amongst these shelves and I probably spent the most time in this shop out of all the others.

For Christmas I got two M&S vouchers, so I thought I'd head into Hereford to see what I could find. The usual stalls (cakes and bread, hand-spun items, veg, baskets and leather goods) are in the Cheese Market. The main focus of Non-conformist worship in the area was the even more remote Olchon Valley, and the oldest Non-conformist chapel in Wales was nearby at Maesyronen near Glasbury. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, though, these meetings became illegal, and people could be fined for not attending the Church of England services. The local congregations met in secret until the Act of Toleration in 1688, which allowed them freedom of worship.There are thought-provoking editions of non-fiction, fiction and poetry. Themes include race, feminism, the environment, nature and more. I wanted to snap up every title!