Author: Tom Fort
Year: 2012
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Genres/categories:
Travel, Non Fiction
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ISBNs:
9780857203274
0857203274 |
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The A303 is a one of the essential routes of English motoring, promising to whisk the traveller towards the green and honeyed lands of Somerset and the far west to a world of holidays and escape. But journeys embarked upon full of the joys of the season all too often grind into a standstill of rage and bitterness before Hampshire even gives way to Wiltshire.
Four-and-a-half thousand years ago the bluestones of Stonehenge were conveyed west from the river Avon along a small section of its route. Roman roads crossed it and drovers' paths lie beneath it. Its route cuts across some of the finest chalkland in southern England. The views are huge, the hills wide and windswept. Ancient woods lay across the summits of the downs and prehistoric monuments and sites are everywhere, the evidence of ancient habitation and worship left in abundance.
Tom Fort samples the fare at the Willoughby Hedge Cafe , legendary among truckers. He seeks out service stations and inns and turnpike toll houses; tells stories of dreadful crashes and highway robberies; of solstice seekers and Stonehenge; of Queen Guinevere and Sir Launcelot; of army camps and racing tracks; Battles and festivals; of churches, abbeys, farms, houses, burial mounds, trout fishermen and falconers.
Digging in dark corners, explorating long-forgotten byways and pouring over ancient maps Tom Fort has created a travel book, a book of social and cultural history, and a book about the England of 3000 BC and the England of 2010 AD.
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