Hardy's Cottage

I went abroad into Dorset today to do the tourist thing at Dorchester. I took my daughter and friend so that they could go to the Dorchester museum and I searched in vain for a yarn shop. We then made our way over to Higher Bockhampton to Thomas Hardy's cottage. It was a good stretch of the legs from the car park but it was through woods, which was lovely because it was such a hot day. Apparently, Hardy wrote Under the Greenwood Tree here and Far From The Madding Crowd.
The cottage is a lot smaller on the inside than it looks from outside. The rooms are very small and the cottage is only one room deep. There is a small staircase at one end and a step ladder at the other. It is owned by the National Trust who are trying to re-furnish it at the moment because they had the wrong class of furniture in it.
The garden is beautiful. It looks overgrown from this angle but it wasn't. It has spiralling paths around the garden so that you have to walk all the way through it before you get to the front door. There was also a lot more colour in the garden than can be seen in the photo.

If you are a Hardy fan it is well worth the trip both to the cottage and the Dorchester museum.