Watership Down

This year I learned that that one of my favourite literary worlds was in fact a real place, so armed with my superior sense of solar navigation and the map in the front of the book, I embarked on a pilgrimage to Watership Down. The land itself is owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber and it is so unassuming that without prior knowledge, one would never notice that they had stumbled upon the home of those famous rabbits. This view affords a glimpse of the Hampshire environs through which Fiver and his followers trekked in search of a new home. The Downs were cold and I soon shivered in my thin clothes as I watched the underside of the trees breathe and whisper in the chill autumn wind.An attempt to climb this tree resulted in being thrown to the ground (I hadn't asked him for permission). When I tumbled to the ground, I landed on barbed wire which ripped a Harry-Potter-scar-shaped cut into my hand. Apparently you can only catch tetanus if the metal is rusty. Clean barbed wire is fine. Even Nuthanger Farm was exactly where it should be. I could have hiked to find the Warren of the Shining Wire and Efrafa, but my time was short. As the afternoon grew darker, woodsmoke from the cottage chimneys mingled hypnotically with the musky smells of the green countryside and I had to force myself to speed onward in order to catch my bus from Kingsclere.

I saw no rabbits that day, although... as I drifted into well-earned rest, in that dreamy world between waking and sleeping, a recollection of the afternoon returned to me as though my memories had been obscured. I had been lying on the ground on Watership Down and the woods were full of movement; I thought I saw a squirrel although nothing was there. I turned around to something in the corner of my eye but it was just a falling leaf. When I looked back, a rabbit sat before me. He waved his paw in front of my face and said, "These are not the rabbits you are looking for."

Then sleep claimed me fully and I fell into dreams about bright eyes, burning like fire...