An autumnal weekend in Hay-on-Wye

Torchlight swings down a deeply wooded drive to Racquety Farm, just outside Hay-on-Wye, and proprietor Ros Garratt greets me cheerfully in a pair of wellington boots despite the late hour. We crunch across what I’ll see in the morning are the yellow leaves of countless walnut trees, and the stars twinkle as she gives a quick tour of the long-drop toilet with its hobbit-like wooden door (“As my dad would say, it’s a DLD – don’t look down,” Ros says) and one of the geodesic domes that I’ll be staying in.

Designed and built by Ros’ husband Geoff, with whom she has run this B&B, camping and glamping business for more than a decade, the canvas domes are roomy and tall enough to stand up in. From £75 per night, they have a gravelled porch and a main space with a double bed plus a seating area around a cosy little wood stove.

Even with extra blankets it’s cold until the sun peeks in through the plastic window – the first cold night of an autumn that has so far clung on to the heat of the summer. The fresh air is certainly bracing when it comes time to strip off and get in the outdoor shower, joined by a fruit-laden elderberry bush that is flourishing with regular watering. I warm some porridge in the outdoor kitchenette, surrounded by heaving raspberry bushes and a couple of free-running pheasants, and on the next hill the pink morning light picks out Hay-on-Wye.

Racquety Farm offers a range of accommodation, including geodesic domes with wood-burning stoves

The little town on the border of England and Wales fills with visitors in summer, coming for the Hay Festival, philosophy festival How The Light Gets In and its famous second-hand bookshops, but autumn offers excellent conditions for exploring the area’s abundant nature and great local pubs. Views of the river can be at their best at this time of year, with the leaves turning on the Wye Valley Walk and Offa’s Dyke Path and the mountains above shrouded in cloud. Both long-distance walking routes can be accessed from Hay Bridge and are a good start for exploring the north-eastern tip of the Brecon Beacons for walking, climbing, caving, mountain-biking, foraging and more. Part of Hay’s former railway line has also been assimilated into a walking route, which makes for a wide and accessible riverside path.

From Racquety Farm it’s a short walk down to Hay Bridge, where the Wye is running fast and dark. The meandering river is wide and shallow so higher water in autumn can make for an easier paddle. Half-a-dozen hire companies operate on this navigable stretch but Want to Canoe?, run by husband-and-wife team Aubrey and Claire Fry since 2013, cater to those with little experience of canoeing, including young families and people with disabilities. Choose from half, whole or multiple days out (from £30 per person), renting equipment that is clean and in good condition, with or without an experienced local guide.

The shallow Wye can be easier to navigate by canoe once the autumn rains begin to fall

Our group is kitted up and taught the basics by instructor Mike, before packing into a minibus with canoes on the roof, like a school trip, and making the short drive upriver to Glasbury. We navigate white-water sections, trees brought down in recent rainfall, and a newly-formed bit of river that has carved out an ox-bow lake full of shallow gravel and rare birds. Each time we round a bend, shaggy grey herons and snowy little egrets lift off, pterodactyl-like; golden-headed goose ganders kept the mallards company and what might be a cuckoo pelts away as we near Hay again.

Equipped with instructions for finding The Boat Inn in Whitney-on-Wye, the unguided afternoon session gets way after lunch. All goes well for approximately 30 seconds, until I get well and truly wedged on a big flat rock underneath Hay Bridge and almost tip the boat trying to get free. But soon there is nothing but the sound of lapping water and birdsong, the current sweeping me along with barely any need to paddle. The sun comes out and lights everything in gold and blue, and kingfishers zip from bank to bank in iridescent flashes.

Just past the ruins of Clifford Castle there are loud squeaky cries coming from the river bank and the breath-taking shape of a large brown thing swimming determinedly across the river to her babies: several families of otters now thrive here in the clean water after being on the brink of extinction in the 1970s. Whitney Bridge, one of only eight private toll bridges left in the UK, hones into view, shortly followed by the riverside pub, where Aubrey fishes me out and drives us back to Hay.

It takes around an hour to paddle from Glasbury to Hay-on-Wye at a gentle pace

A few streets away from the river is Hay Castle, which is currently covered in scaffolding as it undergoes a £5m renovation to turn the fire-damaged Jacobean house into a gallery and education space, and creating a viewing platform atop the Norman tower. It will reopen in early 2020. The surrounding town has undergone several reinventions since it was built in the 11th century, and a walking tour with one of Hay Tours’ knowledgeable guides (£5 per person, lasting up to 90 minutes) helps to unpick its history.

The castle was occupied by local families before becoming the vicarage and then being purchased in 1961 by Richard Booth, the self-styled ‘King of Hay’, with a vision to put Hay on the map as a hub for second-hand books after the railway closed and the town went into decline. He shipped books from closed libraries across America, supplying entrepreneurs with specialist titles and turning the castle itself into a bookshop; shipping containers could only get as far as the car park so the books had to be taken up the steep embankment by wheelbarrow.

There are fewer bookshops in Hay than there once were but those that remain are well worth browsing: Hay Cinema Bookshop holds an astounding 200,000 titles, Richard Booth’s original bookshop on Lion Street has morphed into an arts centre with a tiny cinema and a programme of talks, while The Poetry Bookshop has one of the best window displays in town.

The Globe houses one of Hay’s best restaurants

It is pubs, cafes and restaurants that are now rivalling the bookshops for custom, with good coffee and excellent ice cream in Shepherd’s Ice Cream Parlour opposite the castle, casual lunches including huge slabs of quiche at Oscar’s Bistro (be prepared to share your table with ramblers from the Women’s Institute at busy times), and the creeper-covered exterior of the Blue Boar with its panelled interior and deceptively strong pints of Dunkerton’s Cider, made just up the road in Leominster.

Aside from buying food from the Farmers’ Market on a Thursday, which has been going for an impressive 700 years, you can’t eat fresher than the restaurant at The Globe at Hay. Found a short wander downhill from the main streets, this exciting arts and events space has a restaurant attached, now being run by Billy Trigg, founding member of Jamaica Street Stores in Stokes Croft and previously head chef at The Ethicurean. The simple lunch menu of soup and sandwiches (£10) belies the flawless execution, with exciting flavour combinations, colourful salads and seasonal ingredients sourced locally. The friendly service and forward-facing outlook at The Globe exemplifies all that is good about this little Welsh town in the hills.

Plan your trip to Hay-on-Wye by visiting www.hay-on-wye.co.uk/tourism