Hello again!

I'm just about back from Fungi Town. Well, sort of back, anyway, I'm actually up at Chris' place in Gloucester at the time of writing this because we're all fucking off to Spain for a bit in a couple of days. It didn't make sense to go from here back down to Cornwall and then all way back up again, as it would've been a lot of money and time spent mucking about only to have one night in my own house. Funnily enough, six out of six of my last train journeys have had something go stupidly wrong, from overbooking of seats to just plain ol' being cancelled (and everything in between), so yeah, it's safe to say I'm a bit more reluctant to leave my best-laid plans in the hands of CrossCountry.

So; Fungi Town - let's get into it!

he wasn't impressed with the menu choices

What's Fungi Town then?

Let's start of the beginning, yeah? I suppose I'd call Fungi Town a themed festival, over three days, that takes place in Hay-on-Wye (everyone just calls it Hay), which is a beautiful little village just over the border in Wales (we had to make the arduous trek from England to Wales multiple times a day which took about three minutes). I clearly live under some kind of Cornish rock (likely granite), because although Hay is apparently hugely famous for its literary festival, I had never heard of Hay or the book festival, even though I am a book-loving motherfucker. "What's the theme of the festival", you might ask, if your head had recently been run over by a lorry, and I would reply "fuck me your head's got all squashed up there pal, you need to go to hospital, and also the theme is mushrooms, the clue is in the name, seriously you're not looking well".

As a really brief summary, the town's got a castle, a river, loads of countryside views, top-quality mushroom foraging land, a million billion (20 something) bookshops, and virtually no chain brands (there's a little Spar in the middle, and a Co-Op just outside the town, these seem to be the only exceptions to the rule), so yes it's Middle Class As All Fuck, but it's super pretty. 

it's a fuckin' castle in the middle of town

Somehow the organisers have managed to get almost all of the businesses in town on board with the idea of all doing the same thing, and so most shop windows have mushroom related displays, lots of the food places were doing mushroom related menu items, and there's (duh) events running at various venues in the town over the three days. It's honestly really impressive getting so many people on board with this kind of idea, it's the sort of organisational skill that makes my brainworms start rotating so quickly that my skull vibrates at a frequency that allows me to hear what crystals think. 

The best bit though, is that Hay is in Serious Mushroom Territory. We went out a-strolling, and fuck me sideways, both a short walk or a short drive away you can tick a whole load of cool finds off your list. Proper decent foraging territory up in them thar hills. 

What bits did I take part in?

I was, admittedly, a little bit frazzled after coming back from All Things Fungi Festival 2026. I didn't really get to take part in too much of the "customer" side of that one, as I was being paid to work and so that was my main priority. For Fungi Town though, both me and Chris decided that work wasn't on the agenda (well, it kinda was, but in a roundabout sort of way). I wanted to turn up to a mushroom-related event and film the bits I wanted to film, take pictures of the bits I wanted to take pictures of, and just experience the whole thing at my own pace. It's one of the bizarre accidental pitfalls of having a mycology business, accidentally ending up turning everything that I would've found fun into a work event, when all I really want to do is go foraging and chat about mushrooms with chums over a pint or ten. So yeeeeah, it wasn't all just fuckin' about and eating and drinking, there was lots of arranging work bits too, it's just how it is when you're a small business in a small niche in the same space as all the other people like you. 

We got there Thursday night, wandered into town for a quick drink, and got chatting to a guy outside the distillery. He wasn't there for the festival, he lived there, and it turned out that he'd been a customer of both mine and Chris', which made for a nice chat.

On the Friday, we went up to Smithy's house (MycoMyth on Insta, you really should follow him, it's a very interesting page) to go and have a nice cup of tea and look at all of his reishi, bonsai, and cacti. I've said it a lot of times (and especially when I'm drunk I think I say it to him a lot), but he's really inspired me to start trying to do more creative things within mycology. I've got some interesting plans for future reishi grows, and am going to start growing some shiitake, and it's all because he's shown and explained to me, at length, how best to go about it. I also got to have one foot in England, one foot in Wales, and my taint formed the border between the two nations. Truly a moment for the ages.

one ball in England, one ball in Wales, one ball in no wait that's my secret

Saturday I got to head to Dr Jassy Drakulic's talk, "Friend or Foe? A gardener's guide to fungi", which was along broadly similar lines to the talk I saw Lorin deliver at All Things Fungi. I wanna get more mushrooms growing in my garden at home, just because I like the look of them, and Jassy's talk was about how you facilitate the growth of various species through providing varied environments and nutrient sources. Once again, it's been another "fuck me, here's a huge blind spot" in my knowledge, because I'm just sitting here idly wanting more cool mushrooms in my garden without doing anything to actually help this process along.

Sunday I got to go up to the bluff and do some mushroom foraging myself. We'd heard from some friends that there was a super rare waxcap variety up there somewhere (Hygrocybe spadicea, if you're interested, less than 100 sightings in the UK) so off we fucked, up the hill and found some fairly easily, amongst various puffballs, boletes, libs, parrot waxcaps, and plenty more. Smithy also took me to see The Coolest Tree Ever, and I found a sheep's skull that I've taken home to grow mushrooms out of. Being 44 is fucking weird, man, because I have somehow developed an enthusiasm for things other than trying to pursue Event Horizon levels of depravity. Who knew you could secure a steady supply of free dopamine from a fucking tree, of all things? Actually most people probably already knew that, I've just been lagging behind somewhat. A tree though! Madness.

you may witness the tree

The overwhelming impression I got of Hay was that everyone was really friendly. I dunno if I got them on a good weekend or something, or if they all just enjoy big beardy men with pink beanies on, but down my neck of the woods (south Cornwall) there's absolutely a bit of (only partially) unspoken "fucking tourists" vibe. I think Airbnb and the like have accelerated this, I think the current cost-of-living crises that never seem to get better have also accelerated it, and there's probably another thousand factors I can't be arsed to address or think about. I went to Hay, and I was pretty much expecting a degree of "fucking tourists", but unless I'm being massively unperceptive (this is possible), it didn't seem to be the case. There were some really nice ladies in Pugh's, who were asking us "what's all this mushroom stuff about then? People will really come here for that?!" and they were warm, and friendly, and even had a little joke with us the next day when we went back in there. That particular interaction also goes to show how much more room there is for people to have awareness of mushrooms - it's still such an under-the-radar area for most people, ain't it?

Hats right off to the organisers of the festival (I suspect there are a few of you but I only know Ed and Dave) - I'm amazed that you managed to rope a whole town into doing something like this, but I'm stoked that you did, because it's great, and I'm looking forward to next year. Although I do think when the band (excellent band btw) do the procession through the town on Sunday they should be playing "Funky Town" by Lipps Inc because, y'know, you could have everyone singing "Fungi Town" along to it and that is just about the only improvement I can think of.

those poor ladies in the background saying "well the fucking furries have found us now, pack it all up, Hay's finished"

Honourable Hay-Based Mentions:

Hay-On-Wye Comics - cracking little comic book shop, plenty of stuff for the young 'uns, your usual manga kinda stuff, American bits, plenty of 2000AD, and a cool little back room with one of the Marvel VS Someone Else (it was probably Capcom but I forget) mini arcade cabs in and plenty of Junji Ito books. I'm selling it short by not writing more, it's a rad shop. I got two issues of Archie VS Predator!

The Pizza Box - nice modern bougie pizzas that I like. You know exactly how it is already, there's 'Nduja, Fior di Latte, home-made pots of dip, 24-hour fermented dough, it's nothing new, but it's done well.

FIR by Matt Sampson - if you want to try a fucking phenomenal tasting menu in a very small (it's got about 14 covers) restaurant, you should go here. The menu is the menu, you eat all of what's on the menu, that's what it is. Because it was Fungi Town the menu was a shorter six-course tasting menu, instead of the usual 15 or so courses. Matt Sampson, the chef, is only a young chap but fuck me he can cook, which you'd expect from someone who's worked at some of the top restaurants in the UK (Ynyshir and L'Enclume, if you're as nerdy as me).

Small Stories - a quirky shop with a range of odd things. It's where I got "Princess Diana as Mushrooms" and some interesting postcards. Lots of odd 'zines in there, textiles, that sort of thing. Most probably everyone in Hay-on-Wye gets birthday presents from here I would imagine because it's an interesting shop and everyone's most likely got enough books.

"the fuck are you looking at, pal"This post brought to you in conjunction with Big Hay: Like Hay? Like the sound of a town named after literal Hay? Are you possibly a horse? Enjoy books too? Come to Hay!