Tolkien Trail at Hurst Green, Lancashire (and ROW80 too)

eep! The deadline for the Surrey International Writers' Conference contest is this Friday!

If I call my story done (accomplishing an ROW80 goal!), it still needs at least two more read-throughs before I'll be ready to submit it.

I had a couple of detailed blog posts planned, including one on wacky Canadian stories and authors, but this week is another photo post.

One of the projects I've had hanging over my head is a guest post on our trip to Tolkien country in Lancashire. I've had the photos for quite a long time, and haven't managed to write the post. Instead, I'll share them here now, with a few brief headers.

 

Starting on the
Tolkien Trail, in Hurst Green, Ribble Valley, Lancashire...

 

Not the one in Oxford...

 

"As well as its links to J.R.R Tolkien, other literary figures associated with [Stonyhurst] college include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (a former pupil), the poet Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins (a former member of staff ) and contemporary novelist Patrick McGrath."

 

Intriguing carvings in the gardens of a house near the college

 

Where Tolkien stayed when visiting his son

 

Can you see me?

 

Looking up, inside the tree's bole

 

Cromwell's Bridge

"Whatever the direct links which J.R.R. Tolkien used in his book, he certainly spent much of his time at Stonyhurst working on 'The Lord of the Rings' in a classroom on the upper gallery of the College. An Oxford Professor of Anglo Saxon and later of English Language and Literature, he even taught a few lessons at the College during his visits. Stonyhurst College is proud of its association with the author, which continued when his younger son Michael taught classics at the College and St Mary's Hall in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With the opening of a new Tolkien Library at St. Mary’s Hall in 2002, J.R.R. Tolkien's connection with Lancashire's Ribble Valley will live on for future generations."

 

Not a sound, except for the water and the calls of sheep

 

Looking out over the lands we'd crossed

 

Another day, in Warwick, at the pub!

 

The Warwick Church where Tolkien was married

 

Turkish beer in an English pub!

 

Farewell to Warwick, and England...

The map of the Tolkien Trail that we followed is available through the Visit Lancashire portal.

Which author's or other artist's footsteps have you followed before?