On the Real Watership Down
From the Copse to Caesar’s Belt
With a word of agreement, Hazel went out to call the rabbits together. They made a scattered but swift run to the north-east, along the edge of a field of ripening wheat. No one spoke of the doe. They had covered more than three-quarters of a mile before Bigwig and Hazel halted to rest and to make sure that no one had fallen behind.
As Blackavar came up with Hyzenthlay, Bigwig said,
‘You told us how it would be, didn’t you? And I was the one who wouldn’t listen.’
‘Told you?’ said Blackavar. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘That there was likely to be a fox.’
‘I don’t remember, I’m afraid. But I don’t see that any of us could possibly have known. Anyway, what’s a doe more or less?’
Chapter Forty—The Way Back
View westwards along the ridge where the fleeing rabbits may have ran after exiting the copse. November 2025.
Following the killing of an unnamed doe by a fox in Chapter Forty, The Way Back, Hazel decides the rabbits must move on from the copse where they have rested. They leave, taking a ‘swift run to the north-east, along the edge of a field of ripening wheat’. They subsequently stop three quarters of a mile later, ‘to make sure than no one had fallen behind’. Later, in the early afternoon, they come to the spinney on the edge of Caesar’s Belt where Dandelion had previously shared the story of the Black Rabbit of Inlé.
The copse, Dunn’s Wood, is located on a plateau above the Sydmonton Crossroads to Cole Henley lane. By heading north-east, the rabbits would have come to a ridge that steeply descends down into a narrow valley. (This is the western end of the combe mentioned in Chapter Thirty, A New Journey, where Bigwig inadvertently lures a fox onto an Efrafan patrol.) It is unclear where the rabbits cut down from the hillside, though the text says they do not approach the Belt until ‘the early afternoon’. This suggests they would have either passed through Ridgeway Copse along the hillside, or descended and hugged this copse’s northern flank. Either way, the location where the rabbits conducted a count of their numbers is likely to have been in, or adjacent to the bottle-neck caused by two spinneys; one jutting out to the north from Ridgeway Copse, the other an unnamed extension from the southern edge of Caesar’s Belt.
As with every other part of the rabbits’ journey back from the River Test to Watership Down, this section does not feature in the 1978 film.
View east from the ridge, down into the combe. Somewhere, the rabbits will have crossed here to approach Caesar’s Belt. (The stopping point is likely to be opposite the small spinney on the left in the middle distance.)
Gallery
Looking down into the combe and over to Caesar’s Belt from the ridge.
The track up the southern edge of Caesar’s Belt.
Flayrah! The western edge of Ridgeway Copse is behind me. The ridge is behind the hedge on the right. November 2025.
East along the combe. November 2025.
