Óbidos, one hour north of Lisbon, is an official UNESCO Literary City, and part of the wider Creative Cities Network which began in 2004. In 2013 the Livraria de Santiago, the largest bookshop in Portugal, was opened in the town's huge twelfth-century church. Since then many more bookshops have opened, often with a combination of wares, as at the Livraria do Mercado where you can buy fresh food and books kept on shelves made from old fruit and veg boxes. 

Bécherel (not to be confused with Bescherelle the standard French grammar books used by all French school children) is a tiny, very picturesque medieval town perched on a hill north-west of Rennes in Brittany. It became a Cité du Livre in 1989, and now has a fine mix of bookshops, galleries, and cafés. Vaut le voyage, as they say in Michelin guides. 

To coincide with a few days in Hay-on-Wye, this week on the Post we have book towns. Later this week the famous Festival which was founded in 1987 will begin, and this small town (pop. 1,500) will be packed with readers and book-buyers. Richard Booth opened his first shop here in 1962 and established Hay as a centre for the secondhand book trade. There are now twenty bookshops (including Richard Booth's, above) and all year round Hay is a lively, creative little town with a lovely Thursday market and all the books you could wish for. 

Peonies are just coming into flower now. They are slow-growing perennials with a short season, but are spectacular in the garden or as cut flowers. This is Peonies (c1939, Nottingham Castle), perhaps seen by Stanley Spencer in one of his neighbour's gardens. The Stanley Spencer Gallery is just down the road from Spencer's childhood home and a visit can be combined with a walk round Cookham to spot the locations he used and, depending on the season, many of his floral subjects.

This is a particularly good year for buttercups, which are benefitting from 'No Mow May' initiatives. Stanley Spencer was deeply attached to the Thames at Cookham and this scene, Buttercups in a Meadow (date not known, private collection), is mostly likely by the river. The Chiltern Society has a leaflet for an excellent self-guided walking tour of Cookham ("heaven on earth", Spencer called it). 

One of the joys of May walks in towns and villages is admiring what grows in other people's gardens. Stanley Spencer manages to capture the beauty of ordinary garden plants, such as the lovely Clematis montana and short-lived but glorious lilac, in scenes which could be in many of our novels such as 17, The Grove, home and garden of Celia and Thomas in They Knew Mr Knight. This is Lilac and Clematis at Englefield (1955, private collection).

Aquilegia, more commonly known as columbine or granny's bonnet, is an old-fashioned favourite. It self-seeds prolifically and hybridises quickly so can appear in early summer in new and unexpected colour combinations - something that has happened here, in Stanley Spencer's Columbines (1938, private collection). One of the best known aquilegias is A. "Nora Barlow", named after the Cambridge botanist who was the granddaughter of Charles Darwin and cousin of Gwen Raverat who illustrated The Runaway.