Jane Austen's Country

Wednesday, 15 October 2008

Sleeping through the night has been a problem since I arrived. Generally up at 2.30 or 3.00 am and unable to go back to sleep, so very weary by about 3 pm.

Yesterday was our day to visit Chawton. We set off early. A very nasty panini in Sainsbury’s at Alton (the only cafe open that early) before we started walking.

We followed Anne Marie Edward’s instructions to go where Jane would have walked to visit neighbours and friends in the area. It’s a gentle walk, but very long. We stopped for lunch at the Pheasant Plucker, and I was foolhardy enough to have a glass of wine, which made me very heavy and tired. (We had been walking for four hours by then. Surely Jane did not go so far? I have even greater respect for her now. I was buggered.)

After lunch Alex was complaining about his knees. I decided we’d cut the walk short & just walk along the side of the road to get back to Chawton. But there was no side of the road. The roads are very narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass, and on the verges there are ditches full of stinging nettles, a few of which I encountered. I still have a couple of sensitive patches on my hands.

We ducked through the undergrowth and walked over the edge of a field that the farmer was ploughing on the other side, hoping he would not set the dogs on us. At the end of the field we walked on the road, jumping back into the nettles each time a car approached. In this way, we finally regained the footpath which we’d taken at the beginning of our walk, and it was very welcome. By this stage, I could barely lift my legs. The stiles were torment.

A quick whip around Jane Austen house and then back to the Travelodge to bed. Jane Austen house was a bit of a disappointment after the glories we’d been taking in all day: the sheep on green fields, the dark tunnels of yews and oaks, the seven hundred-year-old churches, the red, yellow and gold carpets of fallen leaves.

Click here to see the Hampshire slideshow.