In those days this lane was the only road through the village, hugged by The Woolpack and a few houses as it followed the contours of the valley. Just beyond the house I took a right fork, and leaving the busy road I followed the lane, passing some houses dating back to the 17th century. “All my beginnings were hatched into this very compact series of narrow, brief valleys, which are like seed pods.” “Living in our valley was like broad beans in a pod,” he wrote. After no more than a few hundred yards, I paused … looking down the steep slope towards the house in which Laurie spent his childhood, one understands immediately the significance to him of the physical character of this area of Gloucestershire. After a warming coffee in The Woolpack (it opens at midday) I set off along the road up the hill. The day I had chosen was bitterly cold but bright, the sky a deep blue there had been an overnight dusting of snow. It’s a walk you can round off with a late lunch in his local – in “his” bar, even. The circular walk, at a pace appropriate to the style of the writer in whose footsteps I was walking, would take me about 2½ hours. Less than three miles north of the Cotswolds town of Stroud, it’s the only pub in Slad, the tiny village in which Laurie had spent his early years. I decided to begin my walk in The Woolpack Inn.
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