Books, Cooks and Looks : Great Wales! : Picturesque Hay-on-Wye is a book lover’s paradise amid scenery worth writing about

It is a bibliophile’s hog heaven. It is Mecca for those who wallow in musty printed matter, glory in the paroxysms of dust pneumonia.

Hay-on-Wye, just into Wales in southwestern England, calls itself the Town With a Million Books. Actually, one shop, located in a cavernous old movie theater and appropriately named The Cinema, brags that it alone has 120,000 used books. And there are more than a dozen other book shops tucked into corners and down narrow lanes in this picturesque medieval town.

Couple that resource with the incomparable scenery of the nearby Brecon Beacons National Park and the many activities possible within a few miles--fishing, hiking, pony trekking, bird-watching--and you have the stuff of which dream vacations are made. Especially for book lovers.

Wales is England’s forgotten corner, a country within a country, where road signs are printed in both English and Welsh and invading legions have failed for more than 2,000 years to de-Welshify the wild and rugged mountains. Wales is to England what Montana is to the United States: beautiful, tough and remote . . . not to mention extremely friendly.

And there’s all those books. . . .

Hay-on-Wye sits at the foot of the Black Mountains on the southern bank of the River Wye, one of England’s most famous fishing rivers. I counted 14 major bookstores in the town of not much more than a thousand people. They range from vast barns housing general-interest used books to antiquarian shops specializing in everything from entertainment themes to the military, from maps to poetry. The Hay Print Shop, as its name implies, sells prints, including cartoons, old advertisements and watercolors.

The latter is owned by Richard Booth, a bibliomaniac and British eccentric credited with founding the town’s secondhand book trade. Booth set up his first shop in Hay’s old fire station in 1962, and proceeded to buy up the town castle and cinema, opening other bookstores along the way. A number of London booksellers followed Booth’s lead, and the town eventually proclaimed itself the secondhand book capital of the world. (Protesting the British government’s rule over the rural community, Booth declared Hay an independent republic in 1977, crowned himself king and named his horse prime minister, but that’s another story.)

The ardent bibliophile can explore the book shops (and a number of antique stores) in one day (although some are closed Sundays) to satisfy his or her book lust. One, the Performance Art Bookshop, carries entertainment memorabilia such as old sheet music and movie fan magazines. A couple of magazines from the 1940s were heavy on photographs of Betty Grable. The Castle Bookshop, one of Booth’s stores, claims to stock the best collection of American Indian books in Britain. The Ecology Bookshop specializes in the environment; Five Star Books Ltd. features 20th-Century military books.

While the larger stores, such as Richard Booth’s Bookshop Ltd. (known as “The Limited”), have more books, some of the smaller shops have real treasures, including first-editions by famed authors. You won’t pay the thumping markups of posh antiquarian bookstores in major American cities, but you will pay the going rate. Hay-on-Wye booksellers aren’t hayseeds.

In most shops, the proprietor is more than willing to shoot the book breeze. While they’re in the business of selling books, they’re in it because they also enjoy books . . . and talking about them. Don’t be afraid to strike up a conversation.

Because of my interest in wildlife and the outdoors, I was looking for any books by Sir Peter Scott, a World War II naval hero and world-famous wildlife artist. Son of Robert Falcon Scott, the explorer who perished near the South Pole, Peter Scott founded the World Wildlife Fund and wrote and illustrated a series of lovely tributes to waterfowl, all out of print, as is his delightful autobiography, “Eye of the Wind.”

I found two of his books at The Cinema, for which I paid about $10 each. Later I was able to get them autographed at Scott’s famed waterfowl refuge, Slimbridge, not more than 75 miles away, across the English border. “They’re quite hard to find now, you’re lucky,” his wife, Phillipa, told me. (Sadly, Scott, who was ill during our visit, died not long ago.)

The Cinema overflows with every genre of popular used book imaginable--science fiction, children’s literature, cookbooks, numismatics, architecture, photography, magic, sports, humor, economics, fiction, you name it--but no one hovers or pressures you to buy. Browsing is more than half the sport, and I found no Hay bookstore owners who objected to customers spending far more time browsing than spending money.

While Hay-on Wye’s main attraction is the books, you can plow through only so many old tomes before your respiratory system rebels. Not to worry. Wales is only about 150 miles north to south, at its widest only 65 miles across and as little as 35 miles east to west, so the country is easy to explore. The most precipitous mountains are in the north, but the tall, rounded hills of Brecon Beacons National Park to the southwest are less formidable for hikers and horseback riders. And they offer spectacular scenery.

Any American using English roads--whether in an automobile, on a bicycle or on foot--needs the nerves of James Bond because English drivers are red-eyed devils behind the wheel of a car. It is unnerving enough for a driver weaned on left-hand drive to drive a right-hand car, never mind that the roads are narrow, bordered with unyielding objects such as stone walls and peopled with maniacs.

But tourists manage to muddle through somehow. And for the faint of heart or pocketbook, there’s always the train or bus.

Most Wye-area inns have a fishing connection and can put an angler on a stretch of stream. My wife and I stayed at the small but comfortable Griffin Inn, a few miles from Hay in Llyswyn, where we learned from innkeeper Richard Stockton that the double l is not pronounced as in “Listen, Louie, let’s leave,” but sort of like cl and sort of like hl and sort of like someone delicately trying to dislodge a popcorn hull from the roof of his mouth.

Welsh is an ancient language--perhaps the oldest in Europe--dating to the barbarians who invaded England long before the Romans. One group veered north, the other south, and the northerners became Gaelic-speaking Scots and Irish. The southerners settled in Brittany, on the north coast of France, then penetrated the dark Welsh mountains and developed the Welsh language whose only close linguistic relative is Breton, a nearly dead tongue.

At the Griffin, for less than a dollar each, I bought some exquisite salmon flies, tied by a local gillie (guide), not to fish with but as collector’s items. One night I decided to walk off a heavy but excellent supper at the inn and paused on the town bridge over the Wye. The water was pocked by trout rising to feed, so many trout that the river surface looked as if a gentle rain was falling. The air was filled with a hatch of a small sulfur-colored mayfly.

The Wye is 130 miles long and ranges from bouldered stretches around Hay-on-Wye that simply reek of fish to the area below Ross-on-Wye, in England, that is reminiscent of Germany’s Rhine, with its stream-side castles. Author George Borrow, in “Wild Wales” (published in 1862), called the Wye “the most lovely river, probably, which the world can boast of.”

Wordsworth gushed, “o Sylvan Wye, Thou wanderer thro’ the woods. How often has my spirit turned to thee?” His poem “Tintern Abbey” celebrated the ruins of a wondrous monastery, built in 1131, that is about 50 miles southeast of Hay-on-Wye.

Hay-on-Wye also is the launch point for hiking treks on Offa’s Dyke, an earthen wall built 1,200 years ago. Offa was the King of Mercia (the English Midlands) in the 8th Century, and his “wall,” which stood 20 feet high and had a 10-foot ditch on the Welsh side, ran the entire length of the English-Welsh border, over steep hills and down through remote valleys.

Historians are not certain whether the dike was a defensive breastwork to keep the ancient Britons out of Saxon England, or simply a border marker. Whatever it was, today the dike, which survives in parts, is a 168-mile hiking trail that has been designated one of Britain’s Long Distance Footpaths.

If hiking is big in this part of Wales, so is pony trekking. On the high ridges of the Brecon Beacons, the grass is lush--Wales averages 55 inches of rainfall a year--and the views are gorgeous. We rented a couple of small but sturdy Welsh ponies, or “cobs,” from a stable called Cae Iago, on the west edge of the mountain range. Owner Charlie Pollack led us and a few other riders up into the hills for a half-day’s ride.

The rugged Brecon Beacons loom like worn down old dog’s teeth. Sheep dot the bright green slopes like distant boulders, and hedges cut the hillsides into a cat’s cradle. Gorse, a rank shrub, grows in thick stands atop some of the ridges. Pollack told us there is a Welsh saying that it’s all right to drink liquor after the gorse is in bloom. “Of course,” he added, “the gorse is always in bloom somewhere. . . .”

There are birds everywhere, and this area is renowned for bird-watching. Another of our stops, the Glanrannell Park Hotel, which is north of the Bristol Channel port of Swansea, is a regular stop for Sierra Club tours, the ecstatic cries of bearded gorp gulpers harmonizing with the Celtic croak of little old ladies in tennis shoes in the hotel bar.

Outside, the laryngitic husk of ravens mingles with the bull-throated coo of the biggest doves a Yankee ever will see. They’re wood pigeons, looking like mourning doves who’ve seen too many Rocky movies.

Wales still is a long way from being prodded and stuffed and shaped into a static condition, the way England is. It still is wild and shaggy, with an untamed charm. Welsh actor Richard Burton started out as Richard Jenkins, a grocer’s assistant in the Welsh capital of Cardiff. He was at the same time suave but also rough-hewn, charming but also roguish, a perfect representation of his country.

More than Offa’s Dyke separates Wales from England. They are as different as day and night. It doesn’t take long to fall in love with the country, and perhaps when you leave Wales you’ll have learned enough Welsh to say “Plentyn Cymreig ydwi, a plant Cymreig oedd fy rhieni,” which translates: “A child of Wales am I, as my ancestors were too.”

GUIDEBOOK

Hay-on-Wye, Wales

Getting there: From London by car, take M40, then A40, to Ross-on-Wye, then follow the A49 toHereford. From Hereford, take A4348 to Hay-on-Wye. Trains leave London’s Paddington station daily for Hereford (a three-hour trip), then take the local bus service to Hay-on-Wye (about one hour). By bus, the National Express offers coach service to Hereford from Victoria station.

Where to stay: In Llyswyn, a small village about nine miles from Hay-on-Wye, the Griffin Inn has eight rooms with private baths for about $50 per night, double, including breakfast. An excellent dinner costs about $50 per person. Write the Griffin Inn, Llyswyn, Brecon, Powys, Wales, U.K., or telephone 011-44-874-754-241.

Also in Llyswyn, a 17th-Century country manor house has been elegantly restored by Sir Bernard Ashley, husband of the late designer Laura Ashley, and opened last year as a luxury inn called Llangoed Hall. Double rooms start at about $220, including full Welsh breakfast and many amenities. Call 011-44-874-754-525, or fax 011-44-874-754-545.

In Hay-on-Wye, the Swan at Hay is a recently modernized Georgian hotel with a good restaurant. Doubles are about $65.

What to do: Visitors can take pony-trekking trips lasting from half a day to up to a week from numerous stables in the Brecon Beacons area. There are liveries just about everywhere on the Wye River where you can rent canoes by the hour, afternoon or week. Salmon and trout fishing are also popular; most hotels can arrange details.

Book buying: If you spend much money on books, be sure to ask for a value-added tax form. VAT is a 15% government fee that may be refundable to foreigners for goods purchased. You must show your passport to get the form, and not all shops participate. When you clear customs, show the form with your purchases, customs will certify it, then mail it back to the shop within three months for a tax refund.

For more information: Contact the British Tourist Authority, 350 S. Figueroa St., Suite 450, Los Angeles 90071, (213) 628-3525.