The United Kingdom of Fantasy Worlds

Edinburgh lived up to every expectation I may have entertained. It is grand, dark and seeping with the exquisite kind of energy that comes from an aged, stone city. I was delighted that I could walk for hours around this charming city, finding always one more dingy little alley or nook and always one more graveyard or gothic monument. The Scottish were good at 'grand'.

I visited The Elephant House, one of the cafes in which JK Rowling penned Harry Potter. Sitting in the back and gazing out the window (above), I would easily imagine her vision of Hogwarts creeping to life.

, I took a train to Exeter where I connected with a local bus into Dartmoor.

From Moretonhampstead I wandered up toward the high moors and was given a lift all the way to the Bellever backpackers.  Before the light faded, I lay down on the medieval bridge that has long since been defeated by floods, contemplating the centuries past when people had walked over those stones.

The next morning I slowly made my way down from the high moors through tracts of forest and along riverside paths. When the sky turned to charcoal and rain fell, I took to the shelter of trees from which flowing lichen hung like the beards of old men. 

I walked and hitch-hiked in steady northward increments, stopping off in the tiny villages that dot the landscape, laced together with paths that have been trod for countless centuries. 

I am in London now, sitting in Abney Park, an overgrown gothic cemetery (below).