Hold Fast Bookshop: One of the most unique places in Leeds

We bobbed along to meet the owners of Hold Fast, the floating bookshop moored at Leeds Dock.

Transcript

00:00My name is Victoria Bonner and I'm one of the owners of Whole Fast Bookshop in Leeds Dock.

00:05We already owned the boat and we did it up from scratch and it was like a burnt out shell when

00:12we got it. It's a former coal barge. Leeds really needed a bookshop and we had a space so we put

00:18the two together. We were really surprised actually how popular it was. We thought it would just kind

00:24of be something little that a few people would pop on and but it's really developed. It's

00:29got its own character now. It's just such a lovely bookshop really. People absolutely

00:35loving the books. It's really nice when people walk down the stairs because everyone says

00:39it's bigger than it looks, which it is somehow. This year we've had plenty of butterflies and

00:46bees and dragonflies come and collect the nectar from the flowers and it just adds a bit of

00:52colour to the shop really and yeah we sell plants from the wheelhouse. All the plants have got

00:58a name basically. I don't know why we do it but it's a fun job of the week. Every week

01:02Vic will be doing important things, ringing up publishers and I'll be like shall I call

01:07this plant Derek or Maxine? It's really difficult to preserve historic ships at the moment because

01:12trip boats are very expensive to run. They're very subject to the weather. The canals are in

01:17quite poor shape at the moment so a lot of the local trip boat companies have had to shut down.

01:22So it's really good that we've managed to find a way to preserve this one.

01:26She was built in 1946 in Nottingly. The first day that she was completed, Marjorie Reed smashed

01:33a bottle on the side of her and christened her and all back in the mid-40s when shipbuilding

01:38was a much bigger thing, all the kids would have a day off school and they'd climb on the

01:44boat. They wouldn't do it now for health and safety and all the adults would have a day

01:48off work and they all watched Marge being launched into the river air. People were smiling when

01:53they were on this boat and I like to think that we're continuing that day one experience,

01:58you know. She won the National Historic's flagship of the year in 2023 and we were really proud

02:04of that. It was such, to go from sort of being in a scrapyard to a flagship of the year was

02:10like massive. You can't beat a paper book really. I think that your concentration is better with a

02:16paper book. I think whenever you're looking at anything on the screen you're always kind of

02:19waiting for a message to come up from your mum or from work or whatever and it's just a very

02:24distracting way to be really. I think when you actually get a paper book and you sit down somewhere

02:29quiet it just takes you to another place whether it's fiction or non-fiction. It's a great combination

02:34because we have a local community that's very strong here. Lots and lots of people live around

02:38Leedstock now and we are their local bookshop and they come back and we get to know them and it's kind of

02:44really nice to have relationships with customers and then we also get people who are just passing

02:50through who may never come to Leeds again but it feels nice to represent the city in a positive way.

02:56It's something different and you need every now then you have to have something different.