Last year I took some panorama shots.  This is the festival site on a fine June day.   Click the shot for a larger image.

During last year’s festival I took several panorama shots of both the town and the festival site.  This one is from the top of the main car park looking out towards the Black Mountains.  It’s such an expansive view that no photograph can do it justice but it calls out for a panoramic view.   Click the shot for a larger image.  Better still go see for yourself.

In a sense the deep origins of the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts go back a bit further.  In 1961 Richard Booth opened Hay’s first secondhand bookshop in the town’s old fire station.  In 1965 he bought the local Cinema and turned that into a bookshop too.  The town of books was born.  In a few years Hay became home to over thirty second hand bookshops and one vendor of the new.

The Festival was conceived around a kitchen table at the home of actor and theatre manager Norman Florence,  his wife the actress Rhoda Lewis, and their 23 year old son Peter.  It is said that the original funding came from £100 won in a game of poker but Peter Florence has never either confirmed or denied the story.  Norman Florence had worked with Sam Wanamaker on the Globe project and had ambitions to create an event of national and global standing.  Rhoda Lewis wanted a party.  The character of the Hay Festival was born.

Among the artists at the first festival was the playwright Christopher Fry.  Norman and Peter had not long before commissioned and produced a musical version of his 1938 play ‘The Boy with a Cart’.   The following year Peter  persuaded American playwright Arthur Miller to be the star guest.  In discussions Miller famously asked what Hay-on-Wye was “is it some kind of sandwich?”  Nonetheless he came and was asked perhaps predictably about his former wife Marilyn Monroe.  Also there for the 1990 Festival, housed in a couple of marquees by the river, was author and poet Owen Sheers. He was then aged just 15 and was there to collect his £100 prize in a short story competition for young Welsh writers.  The organisers also secured the sponsorship of The Sunday Times that year, a major boost to the events credibility and a guarantee of the oxygen of publicity.

The construction of the Hay Festival site is well under way as you can see from this picture tweeted today by Hay Fever Director Sophie Lording.  The site has dried out nicely following the downpours of recent weeks and the weather looks set fair.  Fingers crossed that the sun will shine on Hay at the end of May, and the first week in June, naturally.

With the arrival of the SoundCastle  this year, music figures ever larger at the Hay Festival.  On that note the organisers are about to announce that BBC Radio 1 and Sunday Best DJ, Rob da Bank will host the Hay Festival’s 25th anniversary birthday party on Saturday Saturday 9 June at Clyro Court.  The Wrap Party is billed for midnight and guaranteed to go on until the small hours.

Rob’s musical taste is eclectic and if the party is anything like his shows you might hear anything from stripped down motorway techno to woozy weird folk or electro covers of David Bowie. Tickets are now on sale click here.

With less than a month to go before the start of the Festival the storms at the weekend brought a deluge to Hay.  Lauren Smith snapped a post diluvian picture which shows the entrance to the site location under several inches of water.  We’ve added a picture on the right showing the same spot under normal conditions.   The law of averages means that better weather must surely be on the way for the main event.  The long range weather forecast is also encouraging.

There will be a new ‘pop up’ restaurant launching at the Hay Festival. ‘Boast Your Roast’ will serve up locally sourced food in a bespoke tent with 100 covers in the Pennard Orchard campsite which is a 5 minute walk from the festival site.

It promises to be an upmarket affair with the kitchen run by 2010 Masterchef finalist Matt Edwards (St. John, Hix) along with Christine Veronez (Cellar de Can Roca/Roca Brothers, Barcelona).  The Maitre’D will be Elizabeth Tomes  of Vinopolis.

Lunchtime fare will include a charcuterie board of locally smoked meats and pints of prawns served with aioli.  The main event will take place in the evenings with spit roast suckling pig, Welsh salt marsh lamb, Herefordshire beef and original seasonal vegetarian options on the menu.

So here is our guide to finding a place to stay.

1. Rooms do come onto the market even at the last-minute. The best way to find one is via the bedfinder service.  For £10, they will match up visitors with places to stay as they become available.

2. Look further out – if you are prepared to make the journey (about 45 minutes) Hereford hotels often have rooms still available at late notice and there’s a regular shuttle bus. Lea House a B&B near Ross on Wye has rooms at the time of posting http://www.leahouse.co.uk/

3. Pitch a tent.  There are a number of camp-sites where you can pitch for just a few pounds a night.

Tangerine Fields Camping

www.tangerinefields.co.uk

Wye Meadow Camping

www.peak-performance-consultancy.com/haycamping

The Radnor Arms

www.theradnorarms.com

4. There’s a swathe of up-market camping opportunities to from ridge tents to yurts and rigid podules:

Pennard Orchard

www.pennardorchard.co.uk

Blue Bell Tents
www.bluebelltents.com

Yurt Events

www.yurtevents.co.uk

Podules at Baskerville Hall Hotel
www.bookmypodule.com/hay

Hotel Bell Tent
www.hotelbelltent.co.uk

5. Try the section on accommodation on the Hay-on-Wye tourist information site www.hay-on-wye.co.uk.

6. Check websites for cancellations.  Shrub Cottage, on the Brecon Cottages site became available a few days ago.  Sugar and Loaf also has some properties still.

7. Follow the #hayfestival hash tag on twitter. Some B&Bs, hotels and owners now post availability via their twitter accounts.

8. Try the accommodation section of the Hay Festival Forum.

9. The fringe HowTheLightGetsIn Festival also has camping.  Nothing to stop you staying there.  The festival is worth a visit too.

10. Finally, Emma Balch may have some last minute accommodation…. she bought, gutted, and is completely renovating Pottery Cottage in Clyro, formerly the home of Adam Dworski of Wye Pottery.  It has one spacious room with double bed, and ensuite bathroom and a mezzanine above the main room. It may be at a lower rate if not all the details are finished, or at a higher rate if it’s totally ready, and she won’t know that until the last minute!  Follow her progress here.

The work covers the Leveson enquiry and the furore around privacy and the media the media. It will explore the actions of the Metropolitan Police and the involvement of News Corporation and the News of the World. The hard-hitting subtitle is ‘News Corporation and the corruption of Britain’.

The book is published ahead of a long-awaited official report by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on which Tom Watson sits as one of its highest profile members.  ”I have a hunch it will be one of the most attacked books this year” says Watson.

“Boyd’s novel is an homage to thriller writers, spy novels and crime detection”  The Independent and ”An intricately plotted world of spies, lies and the double cross …Waiting for Sunrise proves that rarest of beasts: a tantalisingly experimental work that is also an immensely satisfying page turner” The Sunday Telegraph.

Questions will no doubt turn to the news that the author of Any Human Heart and Restless will follow in the steps Jeffery Deaver and Sebastian Faulks to deliver an ‘official’ new Bond thriller.  The author is currently staying tight-lipped on the project. ”The only thing I’m prepared to say at this stage about the novel that I will write is that it will be set in 1969.”

Boyd aficionados will note that in his 2002 novel Any Human Heart (2002) Bond author Ian Fleming made an appearance recruiting the central character Logan Mountstuart to the British Naval Intelligence Division during World War II.