After briefly glimpsing Athelhampton Hall, I made my way through the village of Tolpuddle, famous for the Tolpuddle Martyrs often viewed as (some of) the founding fathers of the British trade union movement.
Can remember learning about the Tolpuddle Martyrs at St. Gabriel's in Bury, Lancashire in the early 1980s, and was reminded of their story in the Martyrs Museum at Tolpuddle above: basically, they were shipped off to Australia as convicts; were granted some kind of pardon and returned to Britain after a few years; and then most of them moved on to live in Canada.
My point of interest in Bere Regis was always going to be the church of St. John the Baptist, the model for the church where Tess, her mother and siblings are forced to sleep for a night under the stars in Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'.
The previous night I'd been forced to sleep under the stars myself, in a chalk field somewhere between Stinsford and Higher Bockhampton, but, fortunately this night, I found softer ground on a campsite a couple of miles just outside Bere Regis, where I was able to get about nine hours of sleep:
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