The Sunday Telegraph Sunday 1 September 2019 *** 3
ASHDOWN FOREST,
SUSSEX
The Winnie-the-Pooh books
by A A MilneAs we walk through Ashdown Forest,
sunlight spilling on to our faces
through the tall trees, it feels as if
we’ve stepped into an E H Shepard
Winnie-the-Pooh illustration. The
inspiration for the Hundred Acre
Wood appears little changed since
A A Milne wrote his books, almost
100 years ago, when the Milnes lived
in a house around the corner.
“He (Winnie-the-Pooh) is not
real,” says my 12-year-old son, as we
meander around the forest.
“Then who invented Poohsticks?”
counters my seven-year-old
daughter, triumphantly.
The forest where A A Milne’s son,
Christopher, reluctant inspiration
for Christopher Robin, used to play,is only 32 miles south of London. My
daughter studies the map in her
copy of The House at Pooh Corner as
we wander down the path. She’s
hoping to find Pooh and Piglet’s
Heffalump trap, at the very least. As
we see nothing more than the tallest
of trees, things begin to get
fractious, and then, just in time, we
discover a couple of doors in the
trees, one with the words “Dear
Pooh, I love you. Please write back,”
and honeypots left outside, one
much smaller, Piglet-sized.
Farther down the path, is the
original (though several times
rebuilt) Poohsticks Bridge, and this
is where we settle down to read. We
read the chapter about the invention
of Poohsticks, when Winnie-the-
Pooh discovers the game by accident
and then correctly predicts the
outcome of 36 out of 64 games.
As I read, we gaze over the
original river, which, as in the book,
“was very lazy that day, and hardly
seemed to mind if it didn’t ever get
there at all”. The passage of water is
slowed further still by the dam of
twigs underneath, legacy of
thousands of other Pooh pilgrims.
After reading about Eeyore floating
past, and then his friends’ attempts
to get him out by throwing in a
boulder, we examine the river anew.
“I think that’s the stone Pooh
threw in!” says my daughter, and
life, for a moment, imitates art. “For
a long time they looked at the river
beneath them, saying nothing, and
the river said nothing too, for it felt
very quiet and peaceful on this
summer afternoon.”Abigail BlasiLoch Katrine is great. I was there the
other day. What was it like? Well, the
way I’d put it is that – [clears throat]- “Summer dawn’s reflected hue
To purple changed Loch Katrine
blue;
Mildly and soft the western breeze
Just kissed the lake, just stirred the
trees,
And the pleased lake, like maiden coy,
Trembled but dimpled not for joy;
The mountain-shadows on her
breast
Were neither broken nor at rest.”
Dammit, Sir Walter Scott, you took
the words right out of my mouth.
Those lovely lines are from The Lady
of the Lake, which the Scottish
novelist and poet published in 1810.
It’s a longish narrative poem that
begins with a huntsman, James
Fitz-James, stranded in the forest
surrounding Loch Katrine. Hidden in
a thicket, he sees a mysterious,
beautiful maiden on the loch’s shore.
She offers him her hospitality, and
allows him to row them to the thickly
wooded island that hides her father’slodge. Courtly romance and a
clansman uprising ensue, and Scott’s
stirring poem sold extremely well.
According to the introductory essay
in my Wildside edition, the poem
made the Trossachs “the best-known
mountain district in the world, with
the possible exception of that around
Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.”
Even today, Scott’s fingerprints
are everywhere. Two boats, the Sir
Walter Scott and Lady of the Lake,
make tourist trips across the lake
from Trossachs Pier. The islet that
James Fitz-James visits is known as
Ellen’s Isle after Scott’s maiden.
There’s a wooded road that follows
the loch’s shoreline, and the islet is
signposted from the roadside. Ellen’s
words inspired Schubert’s Ave
Maria, the sign says; I wind up a
handle, and the sign emits a
crackling choral rendition. I push
through the undergrowth and find a
deserted stone ramp that descends
into the loch’s clear water. Ellen’s
Isle, rocky and covered with trees
that it could be concealing a lodge, is
so close that I consider swimming
there. For the time being, I sit in the
sun and enjoy the poem, suddenly
conscious that this is the best place
in the world to be reading it.Tom OughLOCH KATRINE, PERTHSHIRE The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott
LAUGHARNE,
CARMARTHENSHIRE
Under Milk Wood
by Dylan ThomasIt is a hot summer’s day in
Laugharne, not “spring and
moonless”. The sky is cloudless and
bluebell-blue, not “starless and
bible-black”. Yet the cobblestone
streets of the Carmarthenshire
fishing village remain “curiously
silent and hunched”, 65 years on
from the broadcast of Dylan
Thomas’s BBC play for voices,
Under Milk Wood. This is the most
commonly held inspiration (the
other is New Quay) for the town of
Llareggub (Bugger All backwards).
The play, which documents the
thoughts of Llareggub’s colourful
residents, takes place over the
course of a day.
Today though the “sloeblack,
slow, black, crowblack,
fishingboatbobbing sea” is out and
the Taf estuary yawns before me, allmud and cockleshells. A stranded
dinghy provides a point of
immersion for me to sit and read. In
the distance is the rectangular
white mirage of The Boat House, in
which Thomas lived with his family
and wrote for the last four years of
his life; he died in 1953 aged 39. He
is buried in the churchyard and his
face adorns the sign of Brown’s pub;
the phone number of which
Thomas famously left as his own.
In the Fifties my grandmother
was rather struck by a collection of
his poems, reciting them to my
young mum and uncle. Richard
Burton’s baritone narration of
Under Milk Wood would boom out
of the Dansette in their Enfield
council house. For my nan,
Thomas’s was a new take on life,
one that illustrated her own
experience. In her 80s she always
felt 18, recalling the line from
“Should lanterns shine”: “The ball I
threw while playing in the park/
Has not yet reached the ground.”
I still have her copy, and I’ve
brought it with me. Sitting on a
bench, away from the ice-cream
van selling refreshments to the
visitors who are enjoying the views
of the ruined castle, I can feel how:
“Time passes. Listen. Time passes.”Boudicca Fox-LeonardBATH, SOMERSET
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
You’re probably wondering why we
haven’t mentioned Pride and
Prejudice. Well, there’s no single place
in the UK that’s indelibly associated
with it, besides a bit-part for
Chatsworth. For a taste of Regency
Bath, however, try Austen’s first novel,
the gothic satire Northanger Abbey.
HIGHER BOCKHAMPTON,
DORSET
The Wessex novels of Thomas Hardy
Hardy’s fictionalised Wessex, in
which he sets novels including
Jude the Obscure and Far from the
Madding Crowd, mixes several parts
of south-west England. The cottage
where he was born, in the pretty
hamlet of Higher Bockhampton, is
a really good place to start your
Hardy trail.
LYME REGIS, DORSET
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by
John Fowles
From one angle a seaside love story,
from another a historiographical
metafiction. Sarah Woodruff, the
“woman”, spends a lot of time on The
Cobb, Lyme Regis’s stone jetty.
BRIGHTON, EAST SUSSEX
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
“Hale knew, before he had been
in Brighton three hours, that they
meant to murder him.” So begins
Greene’s upmarket thriller, which
includes Brightonian landmarks
such as the Palace Pier. May your
trip to Brighton be less dangerous
than Hale’s.
DARTMOOR, DEVON
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle
Dartmoor was the misty, shiver-
inducing scene of Sherlock Holmes’s
most famous case. Baskerville Hall
could be based on one of several
manors, including the derelict
Fowelscombe.
WA L E S
GILFACH GOCH, SOUTH WALES
VALLEYS
How Green Was My Valley by
Richard Llewellyn
Llewellyn’s first novel, which was
published in 1939 and inspired the film
of the same name, tells the story of a
Welsh mining family in vivid, poetical
fashion. There’s not much to do in
Gilfach Goch, the village in which it’s
set, but you could supplement your
trip with a visit to the Big Pit National
Coal Mining Museum, which is an
hour’s drive away.RADNORSHIRE/
HEREFORDSHIRE
On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin
The border between the counties runs
through the semi-fictional farmhousein which much of this haunting novel,
which follows a pair of identical twins,
is set. The hill itself is part of the Black
Mountains, Herefordshire, though the
farm seems to be based on one near
Llanthony, Monmouthshire.NORTHERN
IRELAND
S MOURNE MOUNTAINS, CO
DOWN
The Chronicles of Narnia by
C S Lewis
The hillscape near the village of
Rostrevor is made Lewis feel “that at
any moment a giant might raise its
head over the next ridge”. It inspired
the fantastical land of Narnia, which in
turn inspired the Narnia Trail in
Kilbroney Park.BELLAGHY, CO DERRY
The poetry of Seamus Heaney
The great Irish poet grew up on a
cattle farm nearby, and his work often
drew on his rural upbringing. In the
village of Bellaghy you’ll find Seamus
Heaney HomePlace, which celebrates
his life and work.YORKSHIRE MOORS
Wuther ing Heights by
Emily BrontëWuthering Heights, the fictional
manor that gives Emily Brontë’s
novel its name, is snowbound when
the story begins. Thick drifts, pitted
with boggy mud, cover the
Yorkshire moors around it. Mr
Lockwood, the narrator, is trapped
in the house shortly after arriving,
and a ghostly encounter introduces
him to the dark and diabolical
history of Heathcliff and Cathy.
The weather could hardly have
been more different when I visited
the moors myself. It was the day
after one of the hottest weekends
in British history, when even the
“eternal rocks” to which Cathy
likens Heathcliff were blazing to
the touch. And yet, as I climbed
through the heather and scrub of
the Penistone Hill Country Park,
just a mile or so from the village of
Haworth where the Brontë sisters
grew up, I started to feel the
“power of the north wind”.
I settled myself into a space
between some rocks and opened
my heather-purple copy of
Wuthering Heights. It was easy to
see how Emily and her sisters,
growing up down below, caught
literally between open hillside and
the graveyard outside their front
door, developed a taste for the
gothic and supernatural.
The moors are silent and empty,
with no ghosts of former lovers to
be seen, but there’s a rugged
beauty too. As I wandered back
down to the village, my head full of
Heathcliff ’s brutality and Cathy’s
optimism, I felt I understood a
little of what persuaded Brontë to
carve her classic out of this wild,
untamed place.Jack RearThe sky is cloudless
and bluebell-blue,
not ‘starless and
bible-black’
GREEN, NOT BLACK, HILLS
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