The banks by the lane are white with snowdrops and a mistle thrush sings in the bare orchard. The writer Thomas Hardy grew up in the thatched cottage at the end of this track. His earliest poem, Domicilium, describes the house as it was in 1800 when his great-grandfather built it. The gardens were wilderness and the lane “a narrow path shut in by ferns”. This cottage, where Hardy wrote Far from the Madding Crowd, is the starting point for a 220-mile hike, the Hardy Way. I’ve walked round much of Dorset on this literary footpath, but I’m here now on a more personal pilgrimage.
