Dorchester is Thomas Hardy’s Casterbridge; he was born just outside it and set much of his fiction in and around its streets. The town began as Roman Durnovaria, and Maumbury Rings — a Neolithic henge the Romans reshaped into an amphitheatre — still sits on its southern edge. Tree-lined walks follow the line of the old Roman ramparts. Dorchester West station is a few minutes from the centre.
