We spotted the house Lee bought with the proceeds of the book, nice and handy for The Woolpack pub and with glorious views over his beloved valley, and how lucky we were to see it in all its summer glory with ‘all sights twice-brilliant and smells twice-sharp’. Lee describes him as ‘thick-legged, red-fisted, bursting with flesh, designed for the great outdoors … the sight of him squeezed into his tiny desk was worse than a bullock in ballet-shoes.’ It was tricky to find the village, but we knew we were getting close when we saw the sign at Bulls Cross – ‘that ragged wildness of wind-bent turves … a sort of island of nothing set high above the crowded valleys’ – the place Lee and his friends would frequent in the hopes of seeing a ghostly spectre.Īrriving at the village, we quickly spotted the school where the fabulously named Spadge Hopkins was taught alongside the young Laurie Lee.
We recently had a little holiday on the Somerset coast but, with me navigating, we took a detour to the Cotswolds to visit a very special village – Slad, the setting of Laurie Lee’s wonderful book Cider with Rosie.
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