Welcome to Hay!

I've seen lots of snippets of blogs written by visitors to Hay-on-Wye, either on holiday to buy books or attending the annual Literary Festival.
This is a blog written by an insider.
When I first came to Hay, I thought that the whole town was slightly skewed out of normal reality. Now I've been here for fifteen years, I'm sure of it.
Hay is unique. We have a population of about 2,000 and 36 bookshops. There are other booktowns scattered about the world, but Hay was the first and is still the biggest. People have been coming here to buy books for over 30 years. They come to the Literary Festival, held towards the end of May every year, and they also come to fish the River Wye, and go canoeing and walking and pony trekking. The Offa's Dyke Path goes through Hay.

Now the Christmas decorations are being taken down all over town, and it seems like a good time to start to describe what it's like to live in the Town of Books.