We got back yesterday evening from our tenth trip to Hay-on-Wye, Wales. Our town-centre Airbnb flat was a little shabby and poky, but I can’t deny it was convenient to be able to drop in for lunch or a cup of tea in between bookshops and other activities. It was definitely looking greener in Wales than in our part of England, though a sign about dog-walking indicated that they’d had the heat waves here, too.
We didn’t begrudge the multiple spells of drizzle over the weekend, even when they coincided with walks to Cusop and The Warren. We’ve been coming to Hay since 2004 and can remember when it was struggle to find a decent evening meal. Good coffee? Forget it. Now one is spoilt for choice for eateries, though we kept costs down a bit by bringing packet curries to cover two nights’ dinners.
The Globe, an arts venue with café and restaurant, was like our home away from home. We went there on the first evening for a burgers and board games night in partnership with Herefordshire Board Gamers. We played a couple quick hands of card game Timeline (Music and Cinema, then British History) before our food came, then invited another couple to join us for Ticket to Ride Europe, where you have to construct several simultaneous train journeys. The HBG rep acted as a coach, reminding us of the rules – we have a copy but haven’t played it for many years – and advising players about their next move if they asked for help. What a great initiative! He was going to be at the Castle on Saturday afternoon, too.
We returned to The Globe on Friday for an hour of its open mic night, which featured a mix of folk and blues acts of various abilities; and again on Saturday morning. We didn’t realize when we booked our stay that we would be in the town for Hay Music Festival. We browsed the programme and plumped for a concert by a wind quintet (flute, oboe, bassoon, French horn and clarinet, with piano accompaniment on some numbers) of young musicians from Sinfonia Cymru. Their repertoire ranged from the familiar (Mozart and sea shanties) to the obscure (Samuel Barber’s “Summer Music” and a Ludwig Thuille piece). I also appreciated the spotlight on two female composers, Mel Bonis and Louise Farrenc. It was a phenomenal performance, and how civilized that the ticket price included coffee and cake from the café.
Hay Distillery and Shepherds ice cream parlour got two visits apiece. I was particularly delighted with my “Campfire Mule” concoction of Dr Beaky’s gin (which has a fascinating smoky flavour), maple syrup and ginger beer; and my scoop of gooseberry and elderflower sheep’s milk ice cream. Appropriately, my main reading for the weekend was Maggie Armstrong’s linked short story collection Old Romantics, which has cocktails on the cover.
Often, if we haven’t visited in a while, we’ll see that a few bookshops and other independent businesses have closed. So what a pleasant surprise to find that four new shops have opened since our last visit: Christie & Doyle – a classic crime extension to Murder & Mayhem, Hay Comics, Bookshop 451 for science fiction and fantasy, and A Shop Called Alice, which appears to be exclusively Alice in Wonderland- and Lewis Carroll-related books and memorabilia. (And a favourite coffee spot, The Bean Box, that we thought had closed has reopened; perhaps we just missed their seasonal hours last spring.) All in all, there are about 20 places in the town to shop for books, and we browsed most of them.
Here’s my haul of 16 books from 8 shops, which included a few by favourite authors, some that I’ve wanted to get hold of for ages, and others that I’d seen mentioned by fellow bloggers. I was especially pleased to locate The Victorian Chaise-Longue, one of my bibliotherapy prescriptions from way back in 2018, in Addymans’ outdoor Book Passage for £1. A couple of purchases that I’ll try to read right away are Gloria Naylor’s novel-in-stories, The Women of Brewster Place, at Booths (for Short Story September); and a remainder copy of Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling at Hay Cinema Bookshop (for R.I.P.). A slightly pricier haul for me this time, with a few remainder copies plus rarer secondhand finds, but the total of £46.42 still works out to an average of less than £3/book. Mr F’s different foci – nature writing, collectible Observer books, bird field guides and New Zealand-set novels in advance of his trip there in November–December – meant he supported several additional shops.
The Naylor was the only specific book that was on the paper wish list I brought with me (which also including Butler generally), while the Hustvedt and Wescott titles were on my Goodreads “priority to find” shelf. Weirdly, as I browsed I kept coming across copies of Michèle Roberts’ During Mother’s Absence and books by Janette Turner Hospital, an Australian author I hadn’t knowingly encountered before.
We often ask ourselves what Richard Booth, the Book Town founder and self-proclaimed “King of Hay,” would think about the town’s gentrification. He was not a fan of the Festival, for instance, and his stack-’em-high-sell-’em-cheap philosophy (“He once said he would much rather sell a million books for one pound than one book for a million pounds”) – which softened over the years as mentors helped him identify and price antiquarian material appropriately – seems rather at odds with the bougie boutiques and hipster cafes. But it’s by attracting a wider and younger clientele that Hay has retained its independent spirit. So I hope rather than turning in his grave he would be grateful to those who have kept the place alive.
I read nearly the first third of the recent biography of Booth, The Bookseller of Hay, while there. James Hanning makes a good case for Booth being that biographical cliché, the bundle of contradictions: privileged but happy to be one of the common men; passionate about his ventures but sometimes sloppy and misguided; with great capacity for compassion but also thoughtlessness. I didn’t know that in 1964 he was responsible for the death of a passenger due to reckless and probably drunk driving. Hanning believes this haunted him for the rest of his life. It’s intriguing to see the different people he interacted with, e.g. Margaret Drabble visited the town with a boyfriend and was dismissive: “Did he ever read books? The books themselves were just the product. I don’t think Richard was interested in literature.” Hanning depicts Booth as an eccentric who would today be considered on the spectrum. I’ll finish reading this to try to keep the Hay spirit alive a bit longer, and might follow it up with a reread of Sixpence House, Paul Collins’s memoir of living and working in Hay.
Though we were sad to leave – mostly because we know we’re facing a long, busy term and the inevitable slide into winter – we know we’ll be back, sooner rather than later.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Instantly jealous. Thanks for sharing!
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That was not my intention, but if it inspires you to go then that’s a good thing.
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What a great trip! Board games and Hay seems a very good fit. Delighted to spot Mateship with Birds in your haul.
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It’s lovely that there always seems to be something going on. We’ve spoken to a few people who have moved to Hay and found a good sense of community — most people are incomers but accepted.
I was so pleased to find that one after your recent blast from the past. Amusingly, it was shelved under Nature in Hay-on-Wye Booksellers!
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Sounds a great trip. Glad to see Gay on Wye still going strong – I did a talk there once. Such nice people.
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How neat! They’ve been going for three years and it seems like they’re doing well.
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So glad to hear that the exodus of bookshops has halted and the number of outlets has even increased. I was fearful that Hay was becoming one of those “destination” places with fewer bookshops and more homeware/decor retailers
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There are a number of those boutique-type shops, but they should never outnumber the bookshops!
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Absolutely!
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Oh, Ticket To Ride is such a fun game – and a really great way to meet other people, as I discovered when playing several rounds during a residential archives weekend at Gladstone’s Library a few years ago. This sounds like a fantastic trip. It’s heartening to hear that more bookshops are opening; out of the new ones, the one that appeals to me the most is Bookshop 451, but they all sound really worthwhile.
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Bookshop 451 and Hay Comics have both new and secondhand stock. We didn’t find anything in them on this occasion, but I imagine we will in future.
We’ll have to suggest Ticket to Ride for a neighbourhood board games night soon.
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Thank you for continuing to support the poor old Welsh economy. I used to escape from our Cardiff office on a Friday for the drive back to North Wales just in time to catch the Hay shops before they closed. No kids then, was never home before 11pm. You do bring to mind a lot of wet afternoons and feeling sorry for the bedraggled outside bookshelves by the castle.
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I do still feel sorry for the Honesty shelves outside the Castle — the books are in terrible condition, and they expect people to pay £2 for them?!
Despite the drizzle, we had a great weekend. There were clearly a lot of daytrippers there on the Saturday.
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I would love to visit the Alice in Wonderland book shop! (would be dangerous for me!)
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We didn’t go in (didn’t happen past during opening hours) but peered through the window. I can hardly believe the subject can fill a whole shop! We did wonder how they approach Lewis Carroll and his dodgy ways…
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Kilvert’s reputation has some slurs against him too and he was local
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Oh dear! I’ve skimmed his diary.
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Like much behaviour, it is ‘rationalised’ as ‘it was a different time…’ (not saying I agree with that at all!)
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I was only there once, but I really would love to visit again to have a slightly more… um… positive experience. See, I was there on September 11, 2001 – yes, that 9/11! While having a coffee, I got a text message from my son about the attack, but didn’t understand what he was saying. When we got to the shop that has only poetry, the TV was on behind the desk and… we saw the second plane hit the towers. After that, we weren’t in the mood to look at books. Needless to say, my flight home that was scheduled for the next day, was delayed for over 14 hours. So, I need to go back to really enjoy the whole place, without some tragedy ruining it.
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Seminal moments that are etched in our minds, I was at the dentist’s. I still can’t quite believe that happened, with no disrespect intended whatsoever.
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Yes… Of course, I’m also of the generation who can remember when John F. Kennedy was shot…
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Wow. I can see why the place would forevermore be connected to that event in your mind. I do hope you can visit again to redeem the town.
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Redeem… that’s the word I was looking for. Yes, I really want to visit again. Hay-on-Wye isn’t to blame for what happened that day.
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We always stay at The Swan in Haye and can recommend it.
We’ll go in October again and looking forward to it. A nice introduction into Haye.
Dr Beaky’s gin sounds great. We’ll try it in October.
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Have a wonderful time! We went to The Swan for dinner on our very first trip but haven’t been back since.
Dr Beaky’s is sui generis! They also do two other, more standard gins plus a vodka.
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I really want to go to Hay-on-Wye sometime – what a great haul!
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Does NI have a book town? Wigtown might actually be easier for you to get to than Hay.
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Plans afoot to make Bellaghy a ‘book town’ of sorts!
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Wigtown then Sedbergh. If you reached Hay (not the easiest place to get to), you would have sampled Scottish, (Northern) English and Welsh rain.
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I’ve completed the trifecta (all in one year one time, even!) and Sedbergh is the least essential of the three, but worth doing if you’re passing through the area.
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Lovely write-up! I too was encouraged by how Hay seems to be revitalised – I think the Alice shop must have opened since I was there in May, so it continues to flourish! And Richard Booths was so much better than the past few times I’ve been there, when it’s had dismally empty shelves. I’ve still never been to the Globe, though have twice stayed in one of their cottages in the adjoining alley!
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I was very impressed about the four new shops within 18 months.
I agree Booths was looking good. They carefully curate their new stock and the secondhand is a good supplement. It was so busy with daytrippers on the Saturday that we could barely move around the ground floor!
I didn’t know The Globe had cottages! It looks like they’re for larger parties whereas we’re always looking for somewhere that sleeps 2. Would highly recommend its cafe/bar and activities to you for next time.
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Sounds absolutely lovely – thank you for sharing! I enjoyed my vicarious travel!
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Fantastic. I don’t know whether I’ll ever make it but Hay-on-Wye is certainly on my bucket list.
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Ooh, you’ve got the same edition of Maud Martha that I have! I must get the Richard Booth book, thank you for the reminder!
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I started it but put it aside for now and will go back to it for Novellas in November.
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Looks like so much fun!!
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[…] Hanning – The Bookseller of Hay. Seen on Bookish Beck’s blog, reminding me I wanted […]
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