The Swan at Hay - Moderately Priced Hotel in A Bookish Town

Essentials:

A Georgian coaching inn being transformed into a townhouse hotel, this is a good value choice for the Hay on Wye Literary Festival and shopping in the second hand book capital of the planet! It's not really in Wales but actually in the Border Marches.

The Swan at Hay is just the sort of inn you'd expect to find in this cosmopolitan hamlet masquerading as a sleepy backwater. Like the town that hosts the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival - called by Bill Clinton, "the Woodstock of the mind" - there's more to the Swan than first meets the eye:

• The French trained chef in the kitchen has earned the hotel's dining room and bistro two Automobile Association Rosettes.
• The 19 rooms, all with en suite bathrooms, have been nicely refurbished in a chintz and flowers, English country house style .
• The modern conveniences -- high speed internet connections, tea and coffee making facilities, color televisions -- aren't overwhelming but enough for a weekend devoted to books and arty pursuits.
• And in the evening, when the hotel's small bar fills up, it's like a party. The weekend I went, a Welsh male chorus suddenly appeared and burst into song.

The owners of this historic Georgian coaching inn spent many years working in the South of France and, from the carefully styled blooms in the rooms to the selections on the menu, the Mediterranean influence is apparent.