The North Facing Escarpment of Watership Down,

in June 1983.

The steep scarp slope of Watership Down. This is taken from near to the pylon.	From chapter 18, 'Watership Down':       '...The north-facing escarpment of Watership Down, in shadow since early morning, now caught the western sun for an hour before twilight. Three hundred feet the down rose vertically in a stretch of no more than six hundred - a precipitous wall, from the thin belt of trees at the foot of the ridge where the steep flattened out.'
''Fiver,' he [Hazel] said, 'let me get this right. You want us to climb up this place, however far it is, and find shelter on the top. Is that it?'         'Yes, Hazel.''

You may think you know my language, Lapine, but Richard Adams has only ever told you of hrair words, sorry, about thirty words and five or six phrases and sentences. Some of the sounds are derived from Arabic. Despite that, there have been attempts by you humans to make a whole language out of it! Well, smenil ah-hedri nost’raka is all I will say about that!

From the path Watership Down rises welcomingly in front of you. From here it is difficult to see where you can break through that belt of trees at the foot of the hill but to climb the down you must. To continue the walk click here.          By 5th March 1998 this path had totally gone, ploughed into the field. As it is not a public right of way, and divided this otherwise even field in two, it has succombed to agricultural progress. The path that lead straight up the down from its foot survives as does the path that follows the line of the trees at the foot from right to left - both are public foot paths.