Hardy's Cottage

Saturday I actually committed a little bit of walking. I know, I'm as surprised as you are, dear reader. I had decided to venture into the English county of Dorset, which I had neglected on my grand tour of the south last year. Seeing a spot on my map labelled "Hardy's Cottage", I correctly surmised that we could only be talking about the great poet Thomas Hardy, and promptly set course accordingly. Hardy has always been one of my favorite English writers, after Swinburne and Tennyson.

The cottage itself was a nice little structure, white painted and with a creaky, cozy interior. Hardy was born here, and no doubt spent his childhood running around the forests and fields, and much of his later literary works take place in a Dorset landscape, or something very close to it. Saturday was the first sunny day in a week, so I took the woodland path back to the car and got in quite a few good pics of the autumn colors.

All pics.

The cottage.


The living room downstairs. There was something wrong with the chimney or sumfin', cuz it was damn smoky in there.


The cottage had a thatched roof. The last few days I've driven through whole villages where every single house had a thatched roof. I love this country sooo much.


A memorial stone to Hardy from American fans. His heart is buried next to his first wife in a local church, while the rest of him was cremated and buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Have I mentioned that I love this country?


Colorful foilage and winding roads galore.


The colors in these two are almost unreal.




Yellow...


...and red.