How many literary festivals can you fit into one summer?

As warmer days draw nearer and we look forward to hours spent reading in the sun, for this week’s Bookmarks I’ve dreamed up an itinerary for how you could spend the next few months: literary festival-hopping across the length and breadth of the UK. It would be ambitious (though physically possible!) to follow it to the letter, but I hope it gives you some inspiration for one or two places you might visit nonetheless.

And scroll down to read what Robert Macfarlane – who wrote about whether rivers are alive in yesterday’s Saturday magazine – has been reading lately.

If you like your literary events served with a pasty, then head down to Fowey, Cornwall, to kick off the book festival season by the sea. The du Maurier Fowey literary festival (9-17 May) will this year feature events with authors Michael Morpurgo and Joanne Harris, and there are also several opportunities to take a guided walk of Daphne du Maurier’s Fowey – the author of Rebecca and Jamaica Inn spent her childhood summers and much of her adult life living in the port town.

After a few days in Cornwall, pack your bags and travel along the coast to East Sussex and visit Charleston, the home and studio of the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and the gathering point of the Bloomsbury Group. From 14 to 26 May, Charleston will be hosting its annual literary festival, which always manages to pull in great names. This year on the lineup you can hear talks from Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya, artist Maggi Hambling and former leader of the Lib Dems Nick Clegg.

And while you’re in the business of hopping between picturesque locations, next on the agenda is the UK’s biggest literary festival in the Welsh border town Hay-on-Wye (22 May-1 June). Surrounded by hills and mountains, Hay makes for a great holiday destination – you can alternate days at the festival (this year’s highlights include James Corden and Ruth Jones, Hanif Kureishi, and Gisèle and Dominique Pelicot’s daughter Caroline Darian) with walks in the countryside and hours browsing Hay-on-Wye’s many secondhand bookshops.

Once you’ve soaked all of that up, travel across Wales to Holyhead and catch the ferry over to Dublin, before heading up to Belfast for its book festival (5-12 June, lineup yet to be announced). While you’re there, make sure you experience Belfast’s rich literary scene: check out the city’s oldest library, The Linen Hall, and the vibrant independent bookshop No Alibis.

Next, swap one capital city for another with a short stop in London for Jeanette Winterson’s appearance at the Southbank Centre on 25 June, where she will be talking about her most famous novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, in celebration of its 40th anniversary. From there, head up to the UK’s current city of culture, Bradford, where you can combine attending the city’s literature festival (27 June-6 July, lineup yet to be announced) with a trip to the Alhambra theatre on 5 July to watch Memories of the Future, a new project from world-renowned dancer-choreographer Akram Khan.

After that, keep travelling north to Harrogate for its renowned Theakston Old Peculier crime writing festival (17-20 July), where you can see Irvine Welsh interviewed by Abir Mukherjee and Kate Atkinson interviewed by Lee Child, as well as the presentation of the festival’s prestigious crime writing awards.

Finally, finish off your tour of UK literary festivals in Edinburgh, for its international book festival (9-24 August, lineup yet to be announced), which runs at the same time as the city’s famous festival fringe – so you can top off a day of literary events with some world-class comedy.