Foiled by the Blue Pool ... again

A festival of running, books, music and movement - but still no Blue Pool

The LoveTrails festival in Wales

There’s a beautiful blue pool on an isolated beach at the end of the Gower Peninsula in Wales, a natural pool that gets left in the rocks when the tide goes out, where you can bathe in blissful tranquility. Or so I’m told. I seem destined never to experience it for myself.

This weekend I was at the LoveTrails festival for the third time. For an old-time runner like me, it’s an odd mix of trail running, yoga, urban street culture, vegan food, festival camping and pumping dance music, mainly inhabited by posturing 20-somethings with beautiful bodies, but with plenty of less flashy older runners of varying levels sprinkled here and there amid the glitter and flares and endless whoops of excitement.

My job, for the second year running, was to curate The Bookshop, a beautiful teepee decked out with bookshelves, standing lamps, armchairs and other such paraphernalia intended to give it the feel of an old fashioned library in a private members club (or something like that).

As well as getting to curate a small selection of books to sell in The Bookshop (see the full list below), I also put together a lineup of author talks. It’s a pretty cool job.