The banks by the lane are white with snowdrops and a mistle thrush sings in the bare orchard. The writer Thomas Hardy grew up in the thatched cottage at the end of this track. His earliest poem, Domicilium, describes the house as it was in 1800 when his great-grandfather built it. The gardens were wilderness and the lane “a narrow path shut in by ferns”. This cottage, where Hardy wrote Far from the Madding Crowd, is the starting point for a 220-mile hike, the Hardy Way. I’ve walked round much of Dorset on this literary footpath, but I’m here now on a more personal pilgrimage.
The last time I visited this cottage near Dorchester was with my mother, Kim Taplin, who died last year. This month, Dorset-based Little Toller publishes a new edition of her first book, The English Path. It’s about footpaths in English literature. Exploring the work of nearly 200 authors and artists, Kim shows the cultural importance of paths in connecting us to each other and to nature. Paths were crucial for work, love, worship and inspiration. “Without them,” she says, “Hardy could not have written, nor Constable painted, what he did.”
At Hardy’s cottage there are
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