Overhead there was a wonderful carolling of larks which seemed to follow me as I went. Indeed, they began to form so integral a part of my conception of the country, that I could have baptized it ‘The Country of Larks’.
In the autumn of 1874, author Robert Louis Stevenson set out on a three-day journey across the gently rolling Chiltern Hills. Almost 150 years later, spurred by the looming construction of the HS2 railway, Gail Simmons takes to the highways and byways of her childhood to follow in his footsteps. Combining an account of her walk through beech woods, farmland and villages dating back to the Domesday Book with impassioned interviews and personal memories, she peels back the layers of history, recording forever a world destined for change.