The Hampshire chalk ridge that Richard Adams turned into rabbit country, walkable on the Wayfarer's Walk with wide downland views
Richard Adams set his 1972 novel Watership Down on this real chalk ridge in north Hampshire, and readers still come to walk it. The down is a rounded hill of chalk grassland in the North Wessex Downs, crossed near the top by the Wayfarer’s Walk, a long-distance path. There is no monument or marker, just open sheep pasture, a stand of beech and long views north across the Kennet valley. Adams grew up nearby, and the places in the story, the down and the fields and the river below, map onto the real landscape. Beacon Hill Hillfort rises a few miles west along the same escarpment.
