I don’t usually make it up onto Watership Down during the first few months of the year. The conditions on the Down can be brutal; the freezing wind cuts through your clothes and the rain, should it arrive, never lets up until you are soaked and bitterly cold.
As late autumn drew in at the end of 2024, the shortening daylight, rain and blustery wind meant that my visits to Watership Down became less frequent than I wished. Sometimes I would do no more than drive down the lane that cuts into the Down’s western slope before heading on north towards Burghclere.
My destination is where the treeline meets with the Cole Henley Road, not too far south of Cannon Heath Farm. It was just to the east of there that Holly and the other emissaries to Efrafa crossed on their way south. Whilst I’m not going that far, I will find my way to the spinney where the rabbits listen to Dandelion tell the story of El-ahrairah and the Black Rabbit of Inlé.
Of all the man-made features within Watership Down, I am always most drawn to the Great Arch, the railway underbridge west of Overton and south of Efrafa. My recollections of it stretch back 47 years to the time I first saw the film at the cinema. I was fascinated by the arch’s red bricks and the train tracks it supported. That was enough for me, though I liked it that the bad rabbit got jumped by the bird here as well.