Photo: Nexxo (Public domain)
A self-guided audio walk through Hay-on-Wye, the border town that became a town of secondhand books. It starts at Hay Castle, burned by King John in 1216, built into a mansion in the 1660s, bought by Richard Booth in 1971 and reopened in 2022, with its honesty bookshelves against the walls. Then the Cheese Market and the Butter Market of the 1830s, Booth's bookshop in the farm-supply building of 1886 on Lion Street, St John's Chapel, which has been a school, a lock-up and a fire station, and the Clock Tower of 1884. Down to the river: the Three Tuns, Hay's oldest surviving house apart from the castle, the bridge over the Wye and the old railway, and, about two and a half kilometres across the river, Clyro, where Francis Kilvert was curate and kept his diary. The walk ends at St Mary's Church beside the Norman Tump, the Cinema Bookshop, and the meadow where the Hay Festival, founded in 1988, puts up its tents each year in late May and early June.
13 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 23 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 19 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Hay Castle, The honesty bookshops, The Cheese Market and the Town Hall, The Butter Market.
Richard Booth's Bookshop and Lion Street, St John's Chapel, The Clock Tower, The Three Tuns and Bridge Street, Hay Bridge, the Wye and the old railway, Clyro and Kilvert's diary.
St Mary's Church and the Tump, The Cinema Bookshop, The Hay Festival site.
The de Braose castle burned by King John in 1216, outside which Richard Booth declared Hay independent on 1 April 1977.
Shelves of secondhand books against the castle walls since the 1960s, paid for in an unattended box.
The farm-supply building of 1886, its golden lion still on the façade, now three floors of books.
A guild chapel that has served as a school, the town lock-up, a fire station and shops, restored in 1930.
The village across the Wye where Francis Kilvert was curate from 1865 to 1872 and kept his diary.
The parish church beside an early Norman motte, with the worn effigy local legend calls Moll Walbee.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 13 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 13 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Hay-on-Wye — the Town of Books, the Castle and the Wye, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
13 narration points, including Hay Castle, The honesty bookshops, The Cheese Market and the Town Hall, The Butter Market and Richard Booth's Bookshop and Lion Street. That is about 17 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~2 hours, plus the walk to Clyro total, but you walk at your own pace. 13 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.