Caesar's Belt,

in June 1983.

A possible (well, not actually) site of the Belt Warren.

From chapter 30, 'A new Journey':         'Where [the roman road] crosses the downs, the line is marked by Caesar's Belt, a strip of woodland as straight as the road, narrow indeed but more than three miles long. in this hot noon-day the trees of the Belt were looped and netted with darkest shadow. The sun lay outside, the shadows inside the trees. All was still, save for the grasshoppers and the falling finch song of the yellow-hammer on the thorn.'

Caesar’s Belt is a formed over a branch of the Portway group of Roman roads, which connected what is now London with Silchester, Bristol, Wales, and other parts of the south of England including Southampton and Porchester. The name ‘Portway’ is not Roman, there being no known Roman name. Also we are not sure which Caesar (emperor) the belt belonged to!

This shot was taken as being a likely site of the new warren on the Belt that Hazel envisaged when he went to confront General Woundwort. The book is vague about this warren's location and 'Tales from Watership Down' doesn't help much except to say it is on a south-east facing woodland edge. This is a north-facing edge thus it's not Vleflain as the warren was later named in 'Tales...', Groundsel was it's first chief rabbit.         The rabbits on the journey to Efrafa entered the Belt somewhere around here and Dandelion told the story of 'El-ahrairah and the Black Rabbit' on the edge of a spinney jutting out from the southern side of this woodland, no more than a hundred metres from this spot.