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Looking out at a single-track country lane over unspoilt downland, I m struggling to see any signs of human habitation. And yet I am barely 20 miles south of Oxford, home to 150,000 people.
In a memorable scene in Jude The Obscure, the title character of Thomas Hardy s novel has his first sight of the dreaming spires of Christminster (Oxford) from a spot close to where I am parked. Hardy s grandmother lived in the nearby village of Fawley, and the stonemason who dreams of being a scholar is given the surname Fawley in the book.
Jude couldn t wait to leave his village and head to his nearest university town, but I go in the opposite direction as often as I can.