posted by Liana Giorgi.
The festival site covers an area of 0.5 square kilometres and comprises six pavilions of varying size. The Barclays Pavilion is the largest, with a capacity of 1,000 people; the Guardian Stage takes around 800, the Sony Screen Stage some 400, the Sky Arts 300, the Oxfam Pavilion 250 and the Dream Stage about 120. In-between the pavilions there are eight food halls and 31 exhibitors, including the Wales Arts Council, tourist information about Spain (where two satellite literature festivals take place – Alhambra and Seville), several fair trade or environment-related kiosks, a crafts and pottery shop as well as a shop for buying sweets, fresh fruit or Hay festival’s own merchandising articles. In the centre of all of this there are two public courts for relaxing and sun-bathing. When the weather is nice – which is, I hear, the exception rather than the rule – people of all ages flock there, sit on the grass and have drinks or a picnic. But the events are still sold out … Over the long weekend (from the 23 to the 26 May) all the pavilions are crowded and so is the small central park, which means that the number of daily visitors goes up to at least 3,500. According to the festival director, Peter Florence, speaking in an interview with ‘The Guardian’, the festival’s main and eponymous sponsor, this year’s festival has broken all records. According to the local radio station, a total of 85,000 persons would have visited Hay-on-Wye by the end of the festival, the majority over the weekends.
