Friday 7^th October: National Poetry Day

7.30pm: Informal poetry reading at Max Gate, led by Jacqueline Dillion, Hardy scholar in residence. Tickets (to include one free drink): £7 (members £5).

Saturday 8^th October: Tess: The Turbervilles and Kingsbere -  A Walk from Bere Regis

10.30 am:  Meet at Bere Regis Car Park, Turberville Road (NGR SY 847 948) for a visit to the church of St John the Baptist and a 5-mile circular walk led by Sue Clarke – across the Bere Stream to Egdon Heath, over undulating terrain with fine views, liable to be muddy in places. Pub lunch in the village.

5.30 pm: The Thomas Hardy Society Annual General Meeting at Max Gate.

7.30pm:  A Harvest Supper at Max Gate. After supper, Bonny Sartin of the Yetties will entertain with music and poetry. Tickets: £12 (non-members £14).

Tess: A Walk from Flintcomb Ash to Emminster

Saturday 17th September 9.30am -Meet in the Square at Beaminster (NGR ST480013) for an 18-mile walk in thefootsteps ofTess of the d’Urbervilles, faithfully following the route of her abortive visit to Parson Clare. Transport will be arranged from Beaminster to the start of the walk – The Brace of Pheasants at Plush. Led by Tony Fincham. Bring a packed lunch. The walk is free, but to facilitate transport arrangements please book your place in advance.

An illustrated talk by Barry Ferguson (piano) with Abbi Temple (soprano), Clement Hetherington (tenor), Jonathan Prentice (baritone) and Rachel Gough (violin). 

In The Victorian Gallery, Dorchester County Museum.

Tickets: £12 (members £10).

Tess Anniversay Walk from Plush to Beaminster on 17th September 2011

About a dozen hikers met in the square in Beaminster at 9.30 am on Saturday, 17^th September to undertake the 18 miles walk from  Flintcomb-Ash to Emminster.  Most of us had travelled considerable distances to be there:  my husband, Richard, and I had been up since well before 5am and watched the dawn break across the Cotswolds as we drove south.  We soon piled into a minibus and were driven very deftly by Sue Clarke through a labyrinth of twisty turny B roads across country to Plush, and let down at the “Brace of Pheasants”, indicated not with a pub sign as such , but a glass case hanging above the front door containing literally a brace of stuffed pheasants . I was wondering what their story was when our leader, Tony Fincham, hailed us a short way to the house with the gable where Tess warmed herself when she first arrived in the village looking for work after she separated from Angel.  Sure enough, the gable did protrude a bit into the road and I couldn’t resist placing my hands on it: not for the first time that day I fancied myself in her shoes.  It was a pretty cottage, whitewashed and cosy looking, with a thatched roof and roses climbing up the wall.

The walk proper then began by way of a steep hill at the back of the pub called Church Hill.  Hardy’s bleak description of Flintcomb-Ash set among chalky hogs’ backs was spot on for the ground underfoot was  indeed stubborn soil, a mass of grey and white flinty stones: I have some now on our mantelpiece at home and it evokes the harshness of this landscape and Tess’s hardships there quite poignantly.  This path took us onto the ancient Dorset Ridgeway, and what a lovely place it was, with wide open grassland studded with wild flowers of clover, thyme and knapweed.  The views of the surrounding countryside were wonderful for it was a fine morning to be out: great fluffy white clouds were scudding across the sky and some late swallows were wheeling round us.  We were quite high up and had clear views over the fields below, some with ridges and furrows, others with odd belts of hedgerows.  But it was also decidedly windy and it was with difficulty we listened to Tony quote from the book about Tess’s movements from then on as she headed westwards.

 I didn’t have a map so don’t know our exact route, and besides, I was always lagging behind trying to take photographs, so I struggled trying to keep up.  I remember at one point passing hedges of sloes and brambles for Richard and some others stopped to eat them.  Somewhere else, as we were walking through what seemed a corridor of head-high grasses, willowherb, and cow parsley, I noticed one of the men was wearing a wide brimmed hat and carried a rustic hewn walking stick and thought he only wanted a smock to look just like some long-ago shepherd.  We skirted the large Jacobean manor house at Minterne  where I was told the Hardy Society has been invited to talks and concerts; and on past fields not of Tess and Marian’s dreaded swedes but  of tall-growing sweetcorn, which seemed strangely incongruous that day.  A little further on, we had to find a way past an enormous puddle on the track and did so by clambering gingerly along the hedging at the side.  “Where’s Angel Clare when you need him?” I heard one of the men say, recollecting the time at the dairy when Angel carried the four milkmaids across the flooded road on their way to Mellstock church. 

But then the lovely sunshine faded and the rain came on quite heavily and we struggled to don waterproof trousers and anoraks before beginning our ascent round High Stoy, another very stony, very steep, very muddy route which I think is known locally as the “Devil’s Kitchen” and where I felt miserably hot and wretched.  Why couldn’t Tess have just telephoned?, I began musing.  Better still, email?  How on earth did she know where to go anyway and how could she have navigated her way in the midwinter dark?  And wearing a whale-boned dress?  Sue later told me that these paths would have been well-known to local people and not as remote as we think of them today.

By this point I think everyone was wearying and some of us were turning strange colours: one girl who had lost her coat shortly after setting off and had got quite soaked was now as white as a sheet, while I was now as crimson as a beetroot  and decidedly out of puff.  With what enormous relief did I hear Tony say we could stop for lunch where our path met the road again, where Sue was waiting for us in the minibus!  But by the time we got inside and unwrapped the picnic stuff, I had no appetite to eat hardly anything.  All too soon we had to be off again but luckily the rain was now gone and our way was straight along the old Roman road to Evershot.   We stopped at the strange lichened pillar at the roadside known as the Cross-in-Hand where Alec  d’Urberville made Tess swear not to tempt him again.  It is fenced off now with barbed wire and is an odd little thing, whatever its history.  From here there were great views towards the Vale of Blackmore and Tess’s birthplace at Marlott.  On we went, past the turning down to Owlscombe (Batcombe) Church, where Conjuror Mynterne was buried, whom the grandfather of Dairyman Crick at Talbothays had employed to get his cows milking again after they had gone dry.  We had now walked nearly twelve miles and by the time we got to the “Acorn” (Hardy’s Sow and Acorn ) at Evershot  for a much-needed drink, one or two of us felt our legs just wouldn’t carry us any further and accepted the offer of a lift back to Beaminster.  While the main party continued on their way, the stragglers pottered around the village for a bit, seeing lots of quaint old buildings, and the sign for the Tanyard, where stood the barn in which Alec was preaching when he saw Tess on her return journey to the farm.  Beside St Osmund’s Church is the cottage where Tess was said to have stopped for breakfast, and she must have been famished for we had been walking for 5 or 6 hours by now and had had two meals already. 

One advantage of taking the minibus was that it gave us time to visit the church at Beaminster for the others arrived too late to see it as they had to get ready for the opera that evening in Dorchester.  St Mary’s is in the beautiful Tudor gothic style and its great pinnacled tower,  unusually still adorned with its statues of saints and local craftsmen, belies a light and airy interior.  Inside are many interesting features, including a finely carved roodscreen and unusual lepers’ squint overlooking the high altar, roof bosses carved into angels playing musical instruments and some lovely stained glass windows.  In a quiet corner of the churchyard, Sue pointed out the grave of the local actress Gertrude Bugler, whom Hardy had chosen to play the part of Tess in the London stage production of the book, and who died as recently as 1992 at the age of 95.  She then took us round to the old vicarage itself, some way from the church and approached via a modern housing estate.   Sadly, the place seemed devoid of old world romance, having been extended in recent times and now used as a beauty salon. 

We were most definitely back in the 21^st century now, having spent most of the day somewhere else entirely, in some other half-remembered, half-imagined time.  Tess must have been made of sterner stuff than I to face that return traipse back to Flintcomb-Ash.  And in her best patent leather shoes.  As Sue and I sat in the Red Lion waiting for Richard and the others to finish, we pondered why Tess gave up so easily when no one answered the doorbell at the vicarage.  Why not wait till the Clares came back from church?  We’ll never know of course why Hardy had her do this, but no doubt she was young and intimidated by seeing Angel’s brothers and Mercy Chant, and humiliated when they found her boots under the hedge.  But we agreed, both of us being older and maybe wiser, that after that marathon trudge, we’d have made sure something beneficial came of it.

In a strange parallel to Alec’s preaching episode in the book, while we were waiting in the square, we are approached by two travelling preachers who were distributing pamphlets about their faith group  and asked us to join them that evening at a barbecue-cum-talk nearby.  We had to decline, but it struck me how the past is never very far away in Dorset somehow.

I nearly bought Richard a packet of Angel Cakes in the co-op by way of celebration then wondered if that was entirely appropriate considering it was Angel’s fault that Tess had undertaken this gruelling journey in the first place.  By the time the hikers appeared back, it was after 6.30pm so the walk had taken longer than planned – 8 hours at least.  It was a great achievement all round and although physically exhausting, I am sure everyone who took part had a memorable time and had some interesting conversations along the way.  As it happened, I had almost finished re-reading the book when by chance I found out about the planned trip, but such was the effect of walking in Tess’s mythical footsteps that day, I now cannot wait to start reading it all over again.

Alison J. Stratton