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Hey, Watership Down fans...
I'm not sure if there are other people who read this journal who love this book as I do, but I was Googling this afternoon to see if the incident in the book where "Dr Adams" and Lucy release Hazel into the wild is based on something that actually happened, perhaps some of the inspiration for the book, and I came across this wonderful webpage:
http://www.mayfieldiow.freewire.co.uk/watershp/watermain.htm
I had the general idea that the major landmarks in the books (Watership Down, the river Test and so on) were real places, but what I didn't realize is that the small-scale geography of the book is accurate in almost every detail, including the power pylon (the rabbits' "iron tree"), the railroad tracks, the Crixa bridle path crossing, and the two low bridges that cause problems for the rabbits when they're escaping from the Efrafrans on the river. Most of it is fairly accurately depicted in the animated film, too, but there's something almost shiver-inducing about seeing photographs of places that had been completely fictional in my head -- particularly since I read the book for the first time as a child, but didn't see the movie until I was an adult, so my mental image of these places was already fixed.
I've done this sort of thing a little bit in both Freebird and Raven's Children, but not to this extent. Somehow the book seems much more real and alive to me now.
http://www.mayfieldiow.freewire.co.uk/watershp/watermain.htm
I had the general idea that the major landmarks in the books (Watership Down, the river Test and so on) were real places, but what I didn't realize is that the small-scale geography of the book is accurate in almost every detail, including the power pylon (the rabbits' "iron tree"), the railroad tracks, the Crixa bridle path crossing, and the two low bridges that cause problems for the rabbits when they're escaping from the Efrafrans on the river. Most of it is fairly accurately depicted in the animated film, too, but there's something almost shiver-inducing about seeing photographs of places that had been completely fictional in my head -- particularly since I read the book for the first time as a child, but didn't see the movie until I was an adult, so my mental image of these places was already fixed.
I've done this sort of thing a little bit in both Freebird and Raven's Children, but not to this extent. Somehow the book seems much more real and alive to me now.
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