Six Books for a Brecon Weekend When the Weather Stays In
Photo: cosy guesthouse fireside armchair books window rain, via image1.slideserve.com
Every guesthouse has a bookshelf, and every guesthouse bookshelf tells you something about the place. At Danyfan it's a shifting, generous thing: guidebooks, old paperbacks, a few hardbacks that someone loved enough to leave behind. When the hills go quiet and the rain settles in for the afternoon, that shelf becomes part of the furniture in the best possible way.
What follows is not a definitive list. It's a suggested pairing — six books matched to the shape of a Brecon weekend, with a note on where to read each one. Some are Welsh, some are about weather and walking, and one is a wild card that has nothing to do with any of it except that it belongs in a valley like this.
One for the slow morning: The Long Field by Pamela Petro
Petro's memoir of Wales, hiraeth and belonging is the kind of book that rewards a second cup of coffee and a window seat. It moves slowly on purpose, circling around what it means to love a place you didn't grow up in, and it's full of the particular ache of coming back to somewhere that has got under your skin.
Read it at the breakfast table at Danyfan, preferably with the rain on the glass and nowhere to be. The chapter on walking the Welsh coast is especially good company for a morning that refuses to get going.
One for the rainy afternoon: The Matter of Wales by Jan Morris
Morris wrote about Wales with the eye of a traveller and the heart of a native, and this collection of essays is ideal for a day when the clouds have decided to stay put. It's dip-in-and-out reading, which makes it perfect for the sofa by the fire or a corner table in one of Brecon's cafés when you've walked as far as the cathedral and back.
If the weather clears for an hour, take it to the canal basin and read a chapter on a bench. If it doesn't, order another pot of tea. Morris would approve of both.
One for the last hour by the fire: On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
Chatwin's novel about twin brothers on a hill farm near the Welsh border is quiet, strange and deeply rooted in landscape. It's also built from short chapters, which makes it ideal for the final hour of the evening when the fire has burned down to embers and you're not ready to go up yet.
Read it in the armchair nearest the stove. The book's slow accumulation of weather, work and silence suits a guesthouse living room in winter better than almost anything else on this list.
One for a wild day out: The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
Not a Welsh book, strictly speaking, but a book about the kind of places Wales does exceptionally well: headlands, holloways, moorland and cold water. Macfarlane's search for the remaining wild corners of Britain is a good companion for a day when you're heading out to Llyn Cwm Llwch or up onto the ridge above Talybont.
Read a chapter in the car before you set off, or better still, read the last few pages in the passenger seat with the heater on and the hills still in the windscreen. It will make you want to go back out, which is the highest compliment you can pay a nature book.
The wild card: The Owl Service by Alan Garner
Garner's novel draws on the Mabinogion and sets its strange, unsettling story in a Welsh valley not unlike the ones around Brecon. It's a children's book in the way that The Dark Is Rising is a children's book, which is to say it isn't really, and it will follow you around for days after you've finished it.
Read it after a trip to Book-ish in Crickhowell, where you can pick up a copy and a coffee in the same visit. Then read the last chapters at Danyfan with the curtains open, because part of the pleasure is being slightly unnerved in a warm room.
One to end on: Collected Poems by R. S. Thomas
Thomas wrote about Wales, weather and a God he argued with constantly, and his poems are short enough to read one at a time. That makes the collection ideal for the last morning of a stay, when you're packing and not quite ready to leave.
Take it to Brecon Cathedral and read a poem in the quiet. Or read one at the door of Danyfan before you load the car. Either way, it's a good way to close a weekend: a few lines, a look at the hills, and the road home.
