Small Feet

Nestled in the hills that roll England into Wales is the tiny town of Hay-on-Wye; self-proclaimed Town of Books. It's home to countless secondhand bookstores, both large and small, on every corner. It also hosts the annual Hay Festival , onto which book-lovers from around the globe descend every summer. Walking through Hay is a pilgrimage through words and pages and narrow streets, through aisles of books on every imaginable subject. It's the sort of place you never want to leave, and not only because it is a textbook example of small-town perfection, surrounded by sheep and rising hills. Within Hay-on-Wye is a route to anywhere - any world - that you could care to go.

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To move westward in England is easy: simply hop onto the next train headed towards the Welsh Marches. As trains continue, farms flash by the windows, and small signs inform you when you pass through the various shires. I landed in Herefordshire, a country of farms and hedgerows that seemed to me mythical in its idyllic greenery. I was not disappointed. Several trains and buses later, I've alighted outside of the Kington Market Hall, after staring in increasing awe out of the windows as stone and timbered houses cluster in small villages around soaring church steeples. This is what I've come to see: tractors and trailers rolling through the streets, and hills rising upwards from the village scattered with sheep and traced with hedgerows, occasional white houses resting lazily in the creases of the pastures. The streets are hung with bunting, and there is the requisite war memorial in the town square, the obligatory town church complete with bustling ladies. Footpaths ...

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Much of what I know of York I've gleaned from the song about the Grand Old Duke: that is to say, I know almost nothing. It seems a first stop in the North of England. I fall asleep on the train despite my best efforts, and wake to the rolling of the English countryside: more sheep; fewer hills; accents on the train that are distinctly not Scottish. Leaving the train on an overcast late-morning, I climb first up, onto the high city walls, carrying my bulging backpack. No one seems to notice. Trees – trees! – drape themselves over the edge of the walls, the worn stones creased and smoothed by centuries of feet. The walls narrow as they cross bars, the tall towers that connect the sections of the walls to each other. Crossing over the river, I leave the wall and plunge down into the city itself. The streets are delightfully narrow, the castle leading up to the Shambles market, which hums with people. Timbered buildings lean precariously outward over the cobbled streets, a...

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