For most of the year, Hay-on-Wye is just a quiet Welsh village.

But for ten days each spring, over 250,000 people descend on Hay-on-Wye. They fill the narrow streets, they book every available bed for miles around, and they spend a great deal of time wandering around a field on the hunt for intellectual stimulation.

Why? Because they’re all obsessed with books – and Hay-on-Wye village is essentially the world’s biggest bookshop.

For those who don’t know, the Hay Literary Festival is a ten day event held each May in the tiny Welsh village of Hay-on-Wye, in the Brecon Beacons. Usually this village has a population of around 1,500 – but that number swells considerably when the bibliophiles arrive.

Avid readers and literary fans come to hear readings, panel discussions, podcast recordings, presentations and conversations from over six hundred different novelists, historians, children’s authors, comedians, academics and prominent thinkers. It’s a literature-loving group which I’d love to know the collective noun for! 

In May 2019 I was one of these Hay festival attendees, catching a train up from London to the Welsh border and daydreaming about the festival which awaited me in just three hours time.

This is pretty much my dream set up: cold coffee, new book and a three hour train journey ahead of me 😍 AND I’m off to spend the day at #HayFestival2019! I’m going to wander around a FIELD OF BOOKS!! Does it get any better?! 📚🙌💛 #HayFestival pic.twitter.com/1cYfVH9OlF

— Flora Baker (@FloraBaker) May 24, 2019

I’ve been to many festivals over the years, some better than others – but I’ve recently come to the realisation that I actually have a fair amount of festival anxiety. The crowds, the chaotic atmosphere, the general pressure to have a Very Good Time: it all combines to make me feel pretty uncomfortable.

But thankfully, the Hay Festival was the complete opposite of a triggering festival situation. And I shall tell you why.

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Why a literary festival is my dream antidote right now

The first months of 2019 have been very enlightening for me. After finally emerging from a surreal and nightmarish 2018 (where I did little more but sob in my bed, eat copious amounts of takeaway food and grieve the death of my dad) I started the new year with a new lease of life.

But that’s not to say I’ve thrown myself back into tons of activities or embarked on months of non-stop travelling. Quite the opposite, in fact.

2019 has seen me slow right down as I happily settle into a routine in London: one which involves catching up on all the blog articles I’ve never ‘had time’ to write (hello, huge guide-style posts about South America!), delving back into working on the third draft of my book manuscript, spending time with friends, and most crucially, ensuring that each day has a focus on self-care.

My therapist recently told me that I’ve got Generalised Anxiety Disorder. This was music to my ears, as I’ve long-thought that my anxious thoughts were serious enough to warrant an official name. With the help of my therapist, I’m now able to work on methods to keep my anxiety in check, and having a routine is a huge part of that.

For now, my self-care routine includes weekly CBT therapy sessions, meditation, going running every other day – and reading as many books as I can get my hands on. 

Rediscovering a love of reading books

Ahh, BOOKS! Aren’t they the best?! Once upon a time I basically lived in my local library – but then I grew up, and went travelling, and the concept of a library membership was all but forgotten.

Until recently, when I walked past my local library and suddenly remembered there were FREE BOOKS in there – and now I can’t stop loudly proclaiming my utter joy to people.

“Look at this huge stack of books! I borrowed all of these for free!!”

There’s nothing like getting lost in a good book, and it’s making me truly happy to be voraciously reading once again (although I know it’s not a competition, I’m still loving the fact that I’ve already read nineteen books this year!). It’s opened up my imagination to all these stunning worlds that so many authors have conceived of, and reminded me just how magical it is to be taken on a journey with them.

So when my friend Jas said she was going to Hay on Wye Book Festival for a talk in late May, I absolutely jumped at the chance. What better activity for a Bank Holiday weekend than celebrating my newly-invigorated bookworm status?

How to spend the day at Hay Literary Festival

If you catch a train from London like I did, you’ll go to Hereford station (the closest city to Hay on Wye). The festival organises bus transfers to and from Hereford – but be forewarned, buses only depart every 1.5 hours so time your train arrival accordingly (or catch a more expensive taxi with other festival attendees).

Hereford is 21 miles away from Hay-on-Wye, so the bus takes about an hour and costs £7.50 for a one-way ticket. When the bus leaves the rolling countryside and starts pottering through quintessential-British-village-style lanes with brightly coloured bunting fluttering in the breeze, you’ll know you’ve arrived.

The transfer bus dropped me on the outskirts of Hay-on-Wye village – a place which already looked so picturesque that I decided to have a little wander before heading to the festival itself.

I highly suggest you do the same. Because it’s ADORABLE.

Have a little look around Hay-on-Wye village

If you want some backstory to the festival, it’s worth knowing that Hay-on-Wye’s unofficial status as ‘the world’s first book town’ is precisely why the festival began in the first place.

In 1961, an Englishman named Richard Booth opened a second-hand bookshop in Hay’s old fire station, capitalising on the closure of lots of libraries in the US to ship books back in huge containers and fill his new shelves. The idea spread, and gradually more people began to open more bookshops, some choosing to specialise in antiquarian books or children’s books or history books.

As the village’s reputation for books grew, Richard Booth promptly moved into Hay Castle (also proclaiming himself the ‘King of Hay’) and partially opened that medieval building up as a bookshop, too.

Nowadays, Hay-on-Wye has over twenty bookshops scattered amongst the streets, and it’s globally known as a Book Town. Which is why it makes total sense that in 1987 a man named Peter Florence sat at a kitchen table with his parents and friends and conceived of a literary festival to further solidify the village’s book-obsessed reputation.

Florence funded the first Hay Festival with winnings from a poker game – although it’s rumoured that his mum also had to bail him out the first year. Luckily, the festival went from strength to strength, and now there are dozens of sister festivals all around the world in places like Colombia, Kenya, Denmark and Lebanon.

Apart from the plethora of Hay bookshops, the literary influence has burrowed its way into every nook and cranny of Hay-on-Wye: parking notices are book-themed, the hanging signs above shop doorways are shaped like books, and even the decorations in the local pharmacy are made with carefully folded pages.

Whether they work with literature or not, it feels like everyone living in this village is keen to jump on the book bandwagon.

Head to the fields of the Hay on Wye Book Festival

My curiosity about the village adequately sated, I followed the street signs to walk five minutes out of the village along the narrow Brecon Road, with fields on my left and houses on my right.

There were stewards in reflective vests politely directing cars into the fields set up for parking, and the row of houses opposite were embracing the entrepreneurial spirit: a family were selling ‘drive thru Welsh cakes’, someone’s front garden had been transformed into a high tea area serving scones and jam, and there was even a cider wagon parked in a driveway pouring freshly drawn pints for thirsty festival-goers!

The festival itself is held in a field just outside Hay on Wye village, where a network of covered green walkways connects fourteen different venues. I hadn’t planned an event schedule once I arrived, choosing instead to simply wander and see what the Hay festival is like from a newbie’s perspective.

In hindsight, this was probably a bit of a waste – especially as in a single day’s schedule I counted at least seventy eight events! On the other hand, my carefree exploring allowed me to get a general sense of what the Hay Festival has to offer. 

Browse the second-hand bookshops

First up, I had an industrious browse in the Oxfam bookshop, the shelves and tables positively groaning with second-hand books.

“Let’s look for Daddy’s books – history books, about things which used to go on!” I listened as the man opposite me read a passage out loud from a heavy-looking book entitled ‘World History’, which made the small boy in his arms wriggle and say “Put me down now!”

Buy some books written by the authors speaking at Hay

Next, I headed to the revered ‘Hay Festival Bookshop’, a huge tented space where virtually every book on the shelves belonged to an author speaking at Hay. Which was a pretty surreal realisation when I thought too much about it.

The bookshop is also where many of the book signings take place, and when I came in I immediately spotted Michael Rosen signing books for a gaggle of schoolchildren who kept asking him for selfies.

Rosen is a childhood hero of mine who wrote literal tons of poetry which I can still remember – which meant I unexpectedly turned into a bit of a gibbering idiot for a while, umming and ahhing about whether to wander nonchalantly over to his signing table and tell him he’s probably responsible for fostering my lifelong love of poetry… but at the last minute I wimped out. Ridiculous.

Read a book in one of the deckchairs on the grass…

One of my favourite elements of the Hay on Wye Book Festival is seeing the deckchairs dotted everywhere, waiting expectantly for book-loving bums to take a seat in.

I wandered the walkways until I spotted an empty chair and made a beeline, settling in and taking my book from my bag with a flourish so I could read for a bit.

…Or get serious in the official Reading Room

Unfortunately English springtime is not the warmest: it got a bit chilly outside so I headed to ‘The Serious Reading Room’, which took my breath away.

This little tented space was filled with comfy chairs and reading lamps, and every single person had their nose buried in a book. It was wonderfully, joyously surreal.

Attend an event at one of the venues

I didn’t manage to see what the other venues were like, but the talk we’d bought tickets for was held in the Oxfam Moot – a sizeable tent with ramped seating, a big stage and three large screens to better see the speakers.

At 5pm I queued outside the venue and took my seat (with my friend still racing to park her car and make it to the venue on time!). Just as the lights went down in the auditorium I spotted her running in from the other side of the tent, so we waited until after the talk to reunite.

For the next hour, I listened to Joan Smith and Nazir Afzal discuss the timely and somewhat terrifying topic of how domestic violence can turn men into terrorists. I’d been a little nervous about hearing this in-depth discussion (terrorism is an anxiety trigger I have to deal with quite often) but it was actually fascinating to hear a human rights activist (Smith) and a British solicitor (Afzal) speak on a subject I knew little about, and I left feeling inspired and educated.

Soak in the joyous sight of people READING! Everywhere you look!

Finally reunited with my darling friend Jas, we headed for the bookshop so I could buy the book I’d spied earlier (a stunning collection of essays by Sinead Gleeson). This was the first time Jas had been to Hay Festival too, and it was lovely to see her initial reactions to the place.

‘It’s very civilised, isn’t it! Very…quiet?!”

The sun was out again, and we flopped down in some deckchairs to catch up. All around us, people were reading books. They sat in deckchairs, on benches, at picnic tables, cross-legged on the floor, leaning against any surface – some held pages open while eating ice cream or munching a mouthful of paella.

It was a gorgeous sight.

The Hay Festival is unlike any festival I’ve been to: it’s calm, serene, fascinating and thought-provoking, with none of the stressful situations of a typical music festival that I’ve come to dislike.

In fact, the idea of a festival focused around books is still so amazing to me. How many large-scale events champion the concept of reading – not to mention providing a space to share what words have taught us, and how much we appreciate the value of a good book?! (And just in case any festival organisers are reading this, I think more festivals should take a leaf out of the Hay Festival’s book. Have an on-site bookshop! And please, PLEASE set up a dedicated reading room!)

I think this short clip from the fabulous Michael Rosen sums up what reading is all about for me. Give it a watch – and then maybe go and pick up a book.

“The great thing about reading is that it turns human experience into a kind of object that you can look at and turn over,” says @MichaelRosenYes @hayfestival #TextualHealing pic.twitter.com/hBLJO4JKRa

— BBC Culture (@BBC_Culture) May 30, 2019

Have you ever been to Hay on Wye Book Festival? And more crucially, are you a fan of book puns?! You might have noticed I couldn’t help but add a few in here – let me know how many you spotted in the comments below!

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