A bookish day out does not have to mean quietly browsing one bookshop and coming home with a tote bag you didn’t need. Across the UK, you can spend a day hunting for cheap paperbacks in a warehouse, stay overnight in a library, build a whole weekend around second-hand bookshops or listen to your favourite authors.
Whether you’re planning a solo day out, looking for something different to do with friends or putting together a literary weekend away, these UK bookish escapes make it easy to build a trip around books.
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66 Book Club, Hemel Hempstead: for a cheap book haul
If you enjoy the slightly chaotic thrill of finding books you weren’t looking for at prices that make it difficult to leave anything behind, 66 Book Club in Hemel Hempstead is the place to go.
The warehouse opens to the public on selected weekends, with two floors of clearance books, remainders and reprints at around 70% off the cover price. I came home with 15 books for £52.67 rather than their combined £168.94 RRP.
Read my full guide to 66 Book Club opening times, parking and queues.
Gladstone’s Library, Hawarden: for a proper reading retreat
Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden, North Wales, is for anyone who has ever looked at a beautiful library and thought they would quite happily move in.
It’s the UK’s only residential library, with more than 150,000 books, reading rooms and bedrooms for overnight stays. You can also visit for the day as a Reader or Researcher, but staying overnight is the more memorable option.
While daytime visitors leave at 5pm, guests can continue reading in the Theology Room until 10pm. It gives you a few quiet, after-hours hours in a historic library. There is something wonderfully indulgent about ending a day in the reading room and only having to walk upstairs afterwards.
There are 26 bedrooms and an on-site restaurant, so it works particularly well for a solo reset or a low-key overnight escape with someone who will not judge you for packing more books than clothes. Take a book you have been meaning to read for months, turn your phone off for a while and let the setting do the rest.
Bath: for a Regency day out
Jane Austen lived in Bath from 1801 to 1806, at a time when it was the fashionable place to see and be seen. Its balls, social rules, promenades and marriage-market energy later found their way into Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. That’s why Bath has more than a small Austen exhibition: the city itself is part of the story.
Each September, the Jane Austen Festival leans fully into that connection. What began as a small event at the Jane Austen Centre has grown into ten days of author talks, guided walks, costume workshops, afternoon teas, balls and the Regency Costumed Promenade, when hundreds of people walk through Bath in full Regency dress.
If you’re visiting outside the Festival, start at the Jane Austen Centre on Gay Street to understand Austen’s time in Bath before walking through the city yourself. You can book Jane Austen Centre tickets in advance if you would like to build it into a full Jane Austen day out.
Bath also stood in for Regency London in Bridgerton, based on Julia Quinn’s books, so there is an extra layer of period-drama sightseeing even if your Austen knowledge begins and ends with Mr Darcy. The Royal Crescent, Assembly Rooms, Holburne Museum and Abbey Green all appear in the series, and a Bridgerton filming-locations walking tour is a good option if you want someone else to point them out rather than spending the day trying to remember where you saw each building.
The Open Book, Wigtown: for anyone who dreams of running a bookshop
The Open Book is for anyone who has ever walked into an independent bookshop and briefly considered giving up their job to live above the shelves.
You stay in the flat above the shop and take over its day-to-day running for a short break, opening up, talking to customers and selling books without the rather significant commitment of actually buying a bookshop.
It is a wonderfully specific bookshop dream to live out for a few days. Once the shop is shut, you can explore Wigtown’s independent bookshops, second-hand finds and the Galloway countryside, then return home without needing to worry about stock orders, business rates or whether anyone will buy the new hardbacks.
Visit a UK book town: for a bookshop crawl and a weekend away
Book towns are places where independent, second-hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated together rather than scattered around a larger city. In practical terms, they are where you set out to browse for an hour and leave wondering how a bag of books became quite so heavy. There are now three recognised book towns in the UK. They share the same basic idea, but each has its own character.
The idea began in Hay-on-Wye in the 1960s, when Richard Booth helped turn a small Welsh market town into a destination for people who are very susceptible to a good second-hand bookshop. It has the largest choice for a proper bookshop crawl, with second-hand, antiquarian and specialist shelves, plus the annual Hay Festival.
Sedbergh is England’s official Book Town, between the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. It’s smaller and quieter than Hay, with independent bookshops and book cafés. In Scotland, Wigtown is the National Book Town, with independent bookshops, second-hand books and its own annual literary festival.
Attend a literary festival in the UK: for authors, ideas and free events
There are hundreds of literary festivals across the UK, from major ten-day events to small local and genre festivals. Three of the best-known are Cheltenham Literature Festival, Hay Festival and Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye
Hay Festival is the reason to turn a Hay-on-Wye bookshop crawl into a proper long weekend. Each spring, a tented festival village appears on the edge of the small Welsh book town, with author talks, debates, workshops, food stalls and a bookshop that makes it very difficult to leave empty handed.
The programme goes far beyond novels, covering current affairs, history, science, politics, music and film alongside big literary names. Spend the morning browsing Hay’s second-hand bookshops, then head to the festival for an author you already love or someone you have never heard of but will probably end up buying a book from anyway.
Edinburgh International Book Festival
As the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature, Edinburgh has a strong claim as a bookish destination beyond hosting the Edinburgh International Book Festival each August. The programme brings together novelists, poets, historians, journalists, artists and big thinkers.
It also has plenty for Harry Potter fans, from Victoria Street and Greyfriars Kirkyard to Potterrow and the city’s many wizarding-world references. I’ve included the Harry Potter stops, alongside the usual sights, in my guide to three days in Edinburgh.
Cheltenham Literature Festival
Every autumn, Montpellier Gardens fills with author talks, panels, workshops, food stalls, a festival bookshop and enough bookish people to make carrying a hardback around feel completely normal. The programme changes every year, but it covers far more than fiction, from politics and history to food, comedy, memoir, wellbeing and popular culture.
I’ve been going since 2017, and it is still the festival I recommend most often. There’s also a substantial free programme around the Festival Village, so you don’t need to book a full schedule of paid events to enjoy it.
See my guide to Cheltenham Literature Festival free events and what to expect.
Which bookish escape should you choose?
- Choose 66 Book Club if you want the biggest possible haul for the lowest price.
- Choose Bath if you want to follow in Jane Austen’s footsteps, add a little Bridgerton sightseeing and finish with afternoon tea.
- Choose Cheltenham Literature Festival if you want author talks, free events and a day built around books and ideas.
- Choose Edinburgh International Book Festival if you want to combine literary events, Harry Potter references and a full city break.
- Choose Gladstone’s Library for a proper reading retreat with exclusive after-hours library access.
- Choose The Open Book, Wigtown if you have ever fantasised about running a bookshop.
- Choose Hay-on-Wye, Sedbergh or Wigtown if you want a slower countryside weekend shaped around second-hand bookshops and browsing.
