No bears at Hay

I’m having a conversation about bears with a lady in the press room. I met a black bear on a Desolation Peak in America last year, I told her. It sniffed around my tent in the middle of the night; a massive snuffling shape the other side of thin canvas.

‘And the thing is,’ I say, ‘that they have such brilliant noses that they can smell biscuits and that sort of thing from miles away.’

A pause. 

‘So it’s lucky we didn’t have any biscuits or the big huffy shape might have taken more of an interest.’

She blinks. ‘I’d love to see bears’ she says, ‘but not like that.’

‘No,’ I say, slightly deflated. ‘I quite understand… it was rather terrifying.’

I make a mental note to improve my bear-brouhaha delivery and make it less biscuit based.

When I was young Hay was the most wonderful idea. A temporary tent city chock-full of stories which mushroomed up each summer between the Wye and the green hills of Welsh Wales. I’d heard about it on the radio and also there were stories of people being flown in by helicopter. It sounded ravishing, utterly cool. And the travel writers and explorers went there to talk of adventures, tell tales of derring-do and great ventures at sea, in deserts… on the Moon.

I first came here two years ago to talk about mountains having followed my great-great-aunt into the mountains of her 1935 memoir and written of my scrambles, climbs and scrapes in a book called Climbing Days. And it was everything I’d dreamt of as a child — I was living the dream of being here with a book of my own — and everybody was so lovely! — interested, interesting and enthused. And so many children. I children I wish I’d been and known 20 years ago. And the children are so engaged and ask the most delightful questions and everybody, everybody laughs in all the right places. It was and remains a joy.

In many ways the tents at Hay are my favourite tents; they’re certainly less hairy than my tent on Desolation Peak. I go out into the world to climb mountains and meet bears so I can write books and return here to tell people about my journeys — I just need to work on my punchlines and talk about biscuits less.