8. Seeing It In The Flesh
After years of COVID disruptions, I finally made it back to the UK to see the locations from TWTW in the flesh! It was amazing to see these places that I had visited (in my mind) so frequently over the past two years of writing. Some were just as I remembered but others were quite different and will require some tweaks to the book.
I started with a quick afternoon in Bristol, clambering around castle park and zipping around in Ubers to try catching museums before they shut. The castle was much more hilly than it had seemed in illustrations and Google Earth!
The remains of Bristol Castle’s great hall, now a cafe.
Next I headed to Bath where I’d hoped to apologise to TWTW’s antagonist (reportedly buried in Bath Abbey). A tour of the Abbey revealed that the Norman abbey had fallen into disrepair due to the Black Death and was rebuilt in the 16th century. Very little of medieval Bath remains but local guide Steve Pratt gave a fantastic tour highlighting what would’ve been present in 1124.
Steve Pratt showed me the remains of medieval Bath, massive bag of references in hand!
My brother was visiting from Australia so we jumped in a car to visit the Quantocks. I got some drone footage of Nether Stowey castle and we strolled around Holford to see its various mills. The highlight of the trip was clambering around Matilda’s cave. The outside was just as I’d imagined but inside was much tighter and required some scrambling around on hands and knees.
Flying the drone around the ruins of Nether Stowey castle. I hope to use Blender to reimagine how the castle may have looked
The entrance to Matilda’s cave
Clambering on hands and knees to get to Matilda’s sleeping chamber
The tunnel opens up to an area the size of what I’d imagined for Matilda’s cave
Looking out into Matilda’s glade