This was my third trip to Hardy's Wessex, and the first time I'd got up into north-east Dorset to visit Shaftesbury. Being in Shaftesbury, we had to have a look at Gold Hill from the old Hovis advert, of course:
In 'The Hardy Way', Margaret Marande (2015: 87) explains that Gold Hill "climbs steeply from the parish of St James under the steep southern slope of the 700 ft high greensand spur on which the town is perched overlooking the Blackmore Vale" (Tess country).
It was fitting that I got to see Gold Hill with my old friend, Dave, as he'd once told me, probably as a joke or yarn, that the old Hovis advert was shot in Heptonstall, near Hebdon Bridge (I'd been daft enough to believe this as well).
Anyway, we both got to see Gold Hill, the real setting for the old Hovis advert, and it was surreal, it was stunningly English (thank God such places still exist):
Margaret Marande (2015: 89) explains that Gold Hill is "lined on one side with eighteenth century cottages and on the other by the imposing retaining wall of the Abbey, dating from the fifteenth century":
Briefly, my imagination allowed me to get a brief glimpse of what the Abbey must've been like in Medieval times, it must've been amazing.
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