Country Road

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Yes. It's only a country road. I have featured it in these pages before. But I stopped the car as soon as I turned into it. Because as far as I was concerned, the light at the end of the road opened into Hobbiton.

Traveling in country familiar to your favorite writers teaches you one thing above all others. They weren't always making things up. The landscapes they describe are here. You walk through them. You drive past them. You stop in the middle of them to take a picture. Which, much to your amazement, turns out to show just what you saw. A road bordered by overarching trees, their roots exposed as the road was laid down over what must have been a well-worn path, forming a tunnel that feels as if it might lead to faery. There was a moated castle not too far from the end. So not quite Hobbiton. But a tiny brush with faeryland all the same.