CORNWALL AND BEYOND: LONDON to EVERSHOT

Welcome to Dorset! Home of Thomas Hardy, Lawrence of Arabia and Cecil Day Lewis, who was a poet, not just Daniel's father. The land is rolling hills of fields, since early agrarian man the farming center of the country. We passed Stonehenge, tumuli (bronze age burial mounds), ancient trade and drove roads and hill forts.

Last night in Bamburgh, 360 miles away, I woke a few times to a pale gray sky. I don't think it ever truly gets dark here so near the Solstice. Even the birds keep singing. The vague night lasted about 5 hours. By 5AM when the alarm went off it was already like mid-morning, and time to head to London.

Ghetto 3 Heathrow

Summer Lodge, Evershot, Dorset

Linda and I are on our 3rd UK adventure. Instead of a long distance walk (since I just did mine) we're sampling different areas and trying out country house hotels. When you're walking all day you aren't seeing the sights beyond what's at your feet, this will give us a chance to catch up on villages and history while scouting new walking areas.

Sitting Room. Thomas Hardy Designed Part of the Building

Dawn Tea

We are spending one night in Evershot en route to Truro. The village and its surrounding area have a number of connections with Thomas Hardy: his literary accomplishments, his career as an architect and his family. Two years after the publication of Tess of the d’Urbervilles in 1891, Hardy designed the second floor of this hotel, which had originally been built in 1798 by Henry Thomas Fox-Strangeways, 2nd Earl of Ilchester.

Don't you love that name? Henry Strangeways!

Evershot

Judge Jeffreys, the Hanging Judge, sat here at the Acorn Inn meting out his sentences. It's said in nearby Dorchester, 1685, while trying the rebels of the Monmouth Rebellion he sent 200 men to their gruesome and harsh deaths and 800 to the West Indies. Judge Jeffreys personally attended as many executions as possible. His ghost or sometimes the sound of choking men can be heard here at the inn. Instead of the usual black and white, red directional sign posts are erected marking the spots across the county where a hanging took place.

"Bloody" George Jeffreys, Misunderstood Civil Servant

Evershot is a charming village in every way an English village used to be before hard times have broken up the communities, closing business and leaving buildings abandoned. It has a school , village shop and post office, a 150 year old bakery (that smells divine by the way) , the 16th-century coaching inn, a church with six bells, our historic country house hotel, children’s playgroup and a parish hall. The name Evershot comes from the Saxon words ‘edfor’ and ‘holt’, meaning "wild boar" and "thicket". I watched the mothers bringing their children to the school this morning. It's a simple and quiet life.