It’s still six weeks to the festival but available accommodation for the Hay Festival is already as rare as a French steak.  Hotels, barns and B&Bs are often booked a year or even two in advance.   However rooms do come onto the market in the run up and the best way to find one is via the bedfinder service.  For a registration fee of £10, they will match up visitors with places to stay as they become available.  It’s also worth contacting the Hay-on-Wye tourist information site www.hay-on-wye.co.uk.

Camping has become more popular and there are now five listed sites:

Wye Meadow Camping
www.peak-performance-consultancy.com/haycamping

Pennard Orchard
www.pennardorchard.co.uk

Blue Bell Tents
www.bluebelltents.com

The Radnor Arms
www.theradnorarms.com

Yurt Events
www.yurtevents.co.uk

The nearest are a short walk from the site and the others offer shuttle services.

If you are prepared to stay further out there is still some availability.  Hereford offers a shuttle bus to Hay during the festival and as of Frida,y Karen Thorne at Hopton House B&B just less than an hour away still had room for festival week.

We’ve published our first list of artists at this year’s Hay, From David Aaronovitch to Simon Weston, who are active on Twitter.  The launch edition has 21 names but we’ll be adding to it in the run up to the festival and it’s set to be a longer list than last year.  You can help by adding names in the comments to this post (and we’ll update the list) or by @posting to our twitter account @Making_Hay.

You can see the list by clicking here or using the tab at the top of the page.