Childish inspiration

Some places that inspired children's stories 

Rudyard Kipling's house where he wrote Puck of Pook's Hill.  He moved to Bateman's the year his Just So Stories were published, 1902

A tiny door in the wall of the Oxford college where Lewis Caroll (really a Mathematics professor called Charles Dodgson) wrote Alice in Wonderland 

Boats at Pin Mill harbour on the banks of the River Orwell where Arthur Ransome set some of his children's sailing adventures  

The woods near Great Missenden where Roald Dahl lived and wrote stories such as Danny the Champion of the World and Fantastic Mr Fox 

The windmill from the children's classic movie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

The steep slope of the real Watership Down in Hampshire

The River Thames where Mole, Ratty and Toad shared adventures in Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows

 The house from Lucy Boston's classic, The Children of Green Knowe

An unbirthday birthday for Lewis Carroll

Today, the 27th January, is the 180th birthday of the great mathematician and writer Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll.


As a tutor at Christ College Oxford, Carroll befriended the daughters of the Dean, Henry Liddell, and made up stories to entertain them. These grew into the now famous and cult book, Alice in Wonderland. 

For those who don't already know: The story is of a little girl who falls asleep by the riverbank and disappears into a  fantastical world. She falls down a rabbit hole to a place peppered with extraordinary animals: the White Rabbit, the Dodo, the Mock Turtle, the Dormouse, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Queen of Hearts.  Brimming with strange creatures, nonsense games without rules, rhymes and songs, logic and illogic, death, madness, drugs and dreams.  

Why not celebrate with a walk along the Thames at Godstow, where Carroll and Alice used to row up stream to picnic on the riverbank and tell stories.  Take a rug and make up silly rhymes, run Caucus races, look for rabbit holes, collect swan feathers, feed the ducks and geese, spot herons and the occasional kingfisher and watch boats floating serenely up and down the river. 




For details of our Alice in Wonderland walk that takes you to all the key Alice places, a couple of excellent pubs, the nice tea shops, the shop where Alice used to buy her barley sugars and where to hire a boat, turn to Chapter 18 of Adventure Walks for Families, In and Around London, by Becky Jones and Clare Lewis. To buy a copy, click here.