Easter may be over but there is a small treat on Google maps for fans of the Hay Festival, especially those desperate for this year’s event to get underway.  A true ‘Easter Egg’ as they are called, is deliberately hidden in a computer program, web page, film or book.  I suspect that the one we discovered on the Hay-on-Wye Google maps location is serendipitous but it is there all the same.

One of the things I love about the Google maps aerial view of Hay-on-Wye is that although the Festival’s tented village has that ‘Brigadoon’ aspect of appearing  then disappearing, the Google aerial view was taken when it was there – so in that sense it is always there.  Go to ‘street view’ however and you get the image above of the Festival entrance (on the B4350 half way between The Meadows and Victoria Cottage on the junction with the Llanigon Road).  There’s nothing but open fields.

To discover the hidden treat you must do the following:

• Advance along the B4350 towards Victoria Cottage
• Take the left turn at the cottage (this is unnamed but it’s in the direction of Llanigon)
• Turn your view back to your left, towards the field that is the location of the festival site

Voila, you can see the site under construction, something in reality that is still a month away. Nice sunny day too.