Eastbound and Westward Ho!

It's not often you find yourself in a church yard for book reading purposes. Much less a book as epic as “The Silmarillion”, a tome of such length and detail that it took it's author, one J.R.R. Tolkien, much of his life to work on.

Yet, here I was on, on a bright and sunny day in the Holderness region of the East Riding of Yorkshire, celebrating an event that sent seismic ripples through the legendarium of the Tolkien community, and in turn set me down my own path towards writing and travel.

The day to be celebrated was Bilbo Baggin's birthday, a very interesting birthday for it was without basis in reality. Yet to many fans around the world, it has all the reality of the birth of a monarch, a day to celebrate literary heroes and all of the trappings they represent. Not to mention the journeys they undertake.

Travel is such an integral part of the lives of those living in Tolkien's worlds, that journeying to one of many sites of inspiration for him seemed incredibly fitting, although I would highly recommend (unlike myself) traveling by bike or by car as public transport is very infrequent.

As I made my way through the area, I was struck by it's timeless quality; a feeling of bleakness yet with beauty to be found in every bush, in every leaf, in every tree. It had all the feel of a land that time forgot, with vast fields stretching across rolling landscapes dotted with isolated houses here and there. A perfect place in which to journey into the past.

My main destination was the village of Roos, a place where Tolkien once stayed, and as the bus dropped me off, I took in the sunshine and took photographs of the place he used to stay there, making my way to the beautiful but stark woodland near Dent's Garth, where his wife danced for him many years ago.

The view across fields framed by a gate opposite this woodland was like a painting, and struck by this, I ventured into this wood, a kind of magical kingdom of it's own, now overgrown and filled with nature.

It was here that I plopped myself down and imagined the Professor sitting here somewhere, all those years ago, with this book that I held in my hand being the common link between us. A time machine of inspiration that now led me to a spot where I was quite sure I was the only Tolkien fan to be found.

I then paid homage to him in my own way, taking many photographs, including that of the Church nearby – a fitting end to my own pilgrimage to another world.