Watership Down locations

[sholio]

To go along with the Watership Down reread - feel free to add your thoughts here! - I went looking for a website I found ages and ages ago, with photos of the real-life locations. I didn't think it would still be online and it's not (this was like 1999 or something; I was young enough to be shocked and amazed because I didn't know the places in the book were real - it was like seeing photos of Middle Earth).

But I did find a site with closeup maps with locations marked and a walking tour of Watership Down and its environs with some photos.

I wish I could find something analogous to the original page, because it was really comprehensive and lovely, with pictures of the power pylons and the river and other places, not just the downs, which is all that seems to be online now.

Anyway, hopefully this will be nice for some visuals for the reread, and if you know of any other good sites like that, please chime in!

Edit: Found on the Wayback Machine by ratcreature! Some of the images don't load, but enough of them do to get a pretty good feel for a lot of the places in the book. I highly recommend checking it out.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I remember that site! Maybe it's on Wayback.

[sovay]

Edit: Found on the Wayback Machine by ratcreature!

"There have been: Hrair visitors to this page."

[anna_wing]

I had no idea it was a real place, thank you for this post!

I knew someone in Chile who had a rabbit called General Woundwort. They originally bought him to eat - he was one of those giant rabbits bred for meat -, but found him too intimidating to kill. So they made him their watchrabbit, and he had his special high-security cage on their verandah (he chewed his way out of regular hutches), which he would rattle noisily whenever anyone came into the compound. Died of old age, intransigent to the end...

[winter_elf]

English countryside is just sooooo beautiful and lovely and wow. (I live in a desert - dirt/cactus)

Which brings up a funny thing which happened when me and a friend did a bus tour after graduating college back in the 1988. We'd never been out the country, so definitely didn't know how to get around, so paid for the whole bus/planned route and all. It was nice - though mostly of our tour group was old folks - luckily, pretty spry ones, with a few younger/parents age.

But - we had a stop at Dartmoor. Utterly lovely, ponies, hedges, mist, rolling hills, and the guide was going on about how "Desolate" and open and 'could get lost and not see another house'.... and we looked around - house there - ponies there, sheep there, sheep dog there, another house in the distance, road. We laughed soooooooo hard. This is "Desolate" - that the next house in just in sight and there is lots of wildlife???

but yea. Those photos are like some I took at Dartmoor - that English countryside is just so awesome. And now that I've been to England twice - I do need to re-read Watership down because I can visualize it now.