After Stafford we went through some very beautiful country, low rolling hills dotted with glorious trees in full green, all washed clean by the recent rain; pretty country roads and winding rivers, old houses, square towers poking above hill-top woods and tall church spires. Now Lichfield, Dr. Johnson’s birthplace. Now Tamworth – “Tam worth tower and town”. Now Atherstone, where saw old loop-holed tower and lovely woods. Now at Rugby, now at Northampton. Everywhere green pastures set around with trim hawthorne hedge-fields of bearded wheat, romantic lanes, pretty old cottages, many of them thatched and covered with ivy and roses – everything settled, established and permanent; and a network of canals and bridges, farms, hamlets and towns. The flatness is not tiresome because it is never quite flat, most of the land gently rising and falling in long undulations, admitting of little dells and valleys each with its pond or its slow-winding stream or river. Have now passed Wolverhampton [sic Wolverton] and Bletchley and cannot be far from the “Big Village”.
Walk March 