On our last day we ditched the leaflets and pushed through a hedge to follow a weathered footpath sign across a copse, in front of Georgian Haffield House, then over a broken stile to a pond at the foot of a secret valley. Frost returned to the US and success, but said he “never saw New England as clearly as when I was in Old England”. The group’s Dymock idyll was short lived: by 1917, Brooke was buried in “some corner of a foreign field” (in Greece) and Thomas had been killed at the battle of Arras. Poets’ Path II follows the chocolate-coloured River Leadon for a while. As the sun came out the land was, in Abercrombie’s words, “one great green gem of light”. Further south, bluebells thronged a slope above the winding River Leadon. The bridle path from here was glorious: lined with shoulder-high cow parsley between a steep wooded hillside and a meadow ablaze with buttercups. Next door is half-timbered The Gallows, where the Frost family stayed with the Abercrombies in 1914. A hut in the garden is a free resource for walkers, with picnic tables and information. Poets’ Path I is all intimate paths and ancient byways, and takes in the former home of Barbara Davis, who drew the leaflets’ exquisite maps. The leaflets were useful, but we were glad of the OS app, with its arrow showing our exact location. The rare Old Gloucester cows that graze the field behind the garden belong to nextdoor neighbour Charles Martell, who uses their milk to make Stinking Bishop, officially Britain’s smelliest cheese. The beam above the bar, complete with hooks for tankards, is still there in the cottage’s sitting room. Stables Cottage is part of Horseshoe Inn House, once the village pub, and the story goes that on a ramble nearby, Frost and Thomas fell foul of a gamekeeper who threatened them with his shotgun, and dodged in here for a steadying glass of cider. Our holiday let in Broom’s Green, just north of Dymock, made the perfect base for communing with poetic minds. They publish guides to two circular routes – Poets’ Paths I and II – each about eight miles, and both now marked on the OS Landranger 149 and 162 maps. Exploring the routes is easy thanks to the Windcross Paths Group, who maintain and signpost routes the poets are known to have walked. The idea of “less-travelled” trails has a particular appeal right now – and in late May we met just one dog walker in two days of hiking. Photograph: Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Robert Frost at about the time he lived in Dymock.
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