Follow the pink signs

h.Art is back this Saturday, and if you’ve never done it properly, this is the year to stop pretending you’ll “have a look sometime”.

For nine days, 400 artists across 134 venues open up studios, workshops, galleries, barns, chapels, gardens and all sorts of other places you’d usually have absolutely no business wandering into.

That’s the bit I love about h.Art. You’re not just looking at finished work on a wall. You’re seeing where it was made, meeting the person who made it and getting a little glimpse into the strange, messy, brilliant process behind it.

And because 134 venues is frankly too many for any sane person to tackle, I’ve been through the programme and pulled out a few that feel particularly worth a detour.

Kington is having a very strong showing. The Old Picture House has Lesley Wootton’s wry, characterful work alongside Miranda Whitten-Walker’s reduction linocuts of our hills and landscapes, plus Vicki Larratt’s intricate studies of seed heads, beetles and other tiny natural things.

Then head a few miles out to Yew Tree Farm in Huntington, where six artists make up the Yew Tree Collective. This is where you’ll find Pippa Lloyd, a self-described “playful potter” making robust wood-fired, salt-glazed stoneware for the kitchen and table. Her pots are properly meant to be used, from oil bottles and bowls to salt pigs and big, beautiful moon jars. Alongside her there’s carborundum printmaking, calligraphy and three metal sculptors, all showing from the farm.

Then there’s Where the Whale Talks to the Stars, which may be my favourite venue name of the entire festival. John Rux-Burton’s Marches Japanese Garden combines photography and poetry with green tea tastings, matcha cake, haiku readings and talks on Japanese gardening. There are guided sessions on planting, pruning and the stories behind some of the garden’s rescued plants too. It sounds completely dreamy.

Over near Ledbury, The Ledbury Flower Farmer is turning its greenhouse and flower farm into a gallery for six artists working across ceramics, wood, textiles, calligraphy and floral art. You can wander the work, pick your own flowers, have tea and cake on the patio and, on Monday, make a fresh hop wreath. Dangerous territory for anyone who enjoys both beautiful objects and cake.

A couple of miles away, Eastnor Pottery is another one I’d circle. Sarah Monk makes colourful slipware and flower bricks, while Jon Williams creates ceramic pieces designed to be shaken, struck and generally interacted with. They’re also running discounted wheel-throwing sessions throughout h.Art.

If ceramics are your thing, Cabalva Ceramics at Whitney-on-Wye is basically a whole day out in itself. Eleven makers are showing work inside a Victorian walled garden, with everything from porcelain and terracotta to sculpture and stone carving.

And closer to home, Abigail Humphries opens her studio in Ludlow’s Quality Square, showing large textured paintings made with sand and acrylic. Her figures have no faces or fixed identities, so everything comes through posture, movement and mood.

The best way to do h.Art is not to overthink it. Pick a pocket of Herefordshire, choose two or three places that make you curious, then follow the pink signs and see where you end up.

You may return home with a pot, a print, a painting, or a sudden conviction that what your life has really been missing is a hand-forged garden sculpture.

Saturday 5 to Sunday 13 September | Across Herefordshire and the borders

Come for lunch. Accidentally buy an antique chair.

I already think Leominster is one of the best towns around here for a proper mooch, and this Saturday it has rather overachieved.

The annual Leominster Food Fayre fills Broad Street and Corn Square before spilling out onto The Grange, with more than 50 food and drink traders, street food and talks from some of the producers in the Council Chambers overlooking the square. It runs from 9am to 3pm and is completely free.

Then over on The Grange there’s a Maker Market with another 30-plus stalls, live music and children’s entertainment. And, as we just mentioned, Saturday is also the opening day of h.Art.

Grange Court has nine artists inside its frankly magnificent 1633 timber-framed former market hall, while the Lion Ballroom on Broad Street has painters, ceramics, jewellery, textiles, featherwork and more. Leominster Priory is another h.Art stop, so you could easily spend most of the day moving between food, art and the town itself.

And do leave time for a mooch around Leominster.

It has somehow collected more than 120 antique sellers amongst its medieval, Tudor and Georgian streets, plus second-hand books, records, little independents and the kind of shops where you go in looking for nothing and emerge 40 minutes later considering whether you have room in the car for a Victorian lamp.

Food fayre. Makers. h.Art. Antiques. Cake.

An extremely strong Saturday.

Saturday 5 September | 9am–3pm | Broad Street, Corn Square + The Grange, Leominster | Free

​See the Food Fayre details​

COME HUNGRY

Newtown is basically feeding everyone this weekend

Newtown Food Festival takes over the Town Hall Grounds this Saturday and Sunday with more than 60 food and drink producers, street food, chef demos, live music, a bar and a whole Children’s Village for anyone attempting to eat something delicious while accompanied by small people.

The main stage runs across both days, with music carrying on until midnight on Saturday, while the Festival Kitchen hosts cooking demos and the Producers Lawn and marquee provide ample opportunity to wander around buying things you had absolutely no intention of buying when you arrived.

I like that it happens right in the middle of Newtown too, so you can drift out into town rather than spending six hours trapped in a field wondering where you parked.

Best of all, you can just turn up and wander in.

Saturday 5 + Sunday 6 September | Town Hall Grounds, Newtown

WELSHPOOL HAS GONE FULL STEAM

Trains, vintage engines and an 80-metre knitted war

Welshpool has apparently decided one event this weekend would be showing a lack of ambition.

First, the Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway Steam & Diesel Gala runs from Friday to Sunday, bringing together steam and diesel trains, road steam, classic vehicles, model railways and a Garden Railway Show.

The railway itself runs for around eight miles between Llanfair Caereinion and Welshpool through some properly lovely border country, so you can make an actual day of this without needing to possess strong opinions about locomotives.

Then, in Welshpool Town Hall, things get even better.

The Longest Yarn 2: Britain at War has just arrived for September: 80 one-metre panels of three-dimensional knitted and crocheted scenes, plus life-size woolly characters, telling the story of Britain from the declaration of war in 1939 to VE Day. There’s rationing, evacuees, the Blitz, the Women’s Land Army, the Home Guard and all sorts of tiny, extraordinarily detailed knitted humanity.

Hundreds of volunteer knitters helped create it. The original Longest Yarn exhibition about D-Day toured Britain and America before ending up in Normandy, so this is considerably more ambitious than somebody getting carried away with a scarf.

Do the trains. See the giant knitting. Have an excellent and extremely specific day in Welshpool.

Steam & Diesel Gala: Friday 4 to Sunday 6 September | Welshpool + Llanfair Caereinion

​Book the railway here​

The Longest Yarn: throughout September | Welshpool Town Hall | Free, £5 donation suggested

​Have a look at the woolly wonderland here​

JESSICA FLETCHER NEEDS YOUR HELP

Cabot cove comes to Monmouth

Jessica Fletcher, patron saint of going somewhere perfectly pleasant and immediately encountering a corpse, is coming to the Savoy.

Solve-Along-A-Murder-She-Wrote is an interactive screening of A Fashionable Way to Die, in which Jessica heads to Paris to visit a fashion designer friend and, inevitably, somebody gets murdered.

There’s a Suspiciometer, Fameometer, Cabot Cove quiz, prizes and a race to beat JB Fletcher to the killer. The show has done Edinburgh Fringe, toured internationally and was named one of Time Out’s great London nights out.

I watched every episode of MSW as a student so I cannot see a single reason why watching Angela Lansbury solve a fictional Parisian murder with a room full of equally invested strangers wouldn’t improve a Sunday evening.

Sunday 6 September, 7.30pm | Savoy Theatre, Monmouth | £21

​Tickets available here. ​

THE NICE PILE

Meet the Romans at Caerwent, where a Roman centurion, his lady and a Silurian wise woman will be roaming Venta Silurum with guided tours, herbs and free children’s activities. Also free. Saturday 5 September. Find out more​

Summerfest at The Sweeney near Oswestry has six DJs, beer, wine and spirit producers and a guest chef with a sizeable online following for £15. Saturday 5 September. Book here​

Llanover Gardens opens its gates near Abergavenny in aid of Horatio’s Garden Wales, giving you rare access to the Grade II listed garden with arboreta, herbaceous borders, streams, ponds and, crucially, cream teas. Sunday 6 September | £8. Book here​

Girl From the North Country comes to the Blake Theatre screen in Monmouth, reworking 20 Bob Dylan songs inside Conor McPherson’s acclaimed stage musical. Thursday 3 September, 7pm. See what’s on here​

And right at the other end of this issue’s week, The Sixteen perform in Hereford Cathedral, filling the place with Spanish Renaissance choral music alongside James MacMillan and a new Kerensa Briggs commission. That building plus those voices should be quite something. Thursday 10 September, 7.30pm | £15–£35. Book her​

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