Lewis Carroll

All in the golden afternoon 
Full leisurely we glide; 
For both our oars, with little skill, 
By little arms are plied, 
While little hands make vain pretence 
Our wanderings to guide.’ 

These lines are from the opening poem of Alice in Wonderland, the creation of Lewis Carroll. Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a mathematics don, and based his most famous character on Alice Liddell, the ten-year old daughter of the dean of Christ Church College, Oxford.  

One day in the summer of 1862, Carroll took her and her two sisters on a boating picnic on the Thames between Oxford and Godstow. It was on this trip that he first told the story of how Alice fell down the rabbit hole and ended up meeting amazing creatures such as the White Rabbit, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts. This stretch of river can be easily visited, as it is part of the Thames Path that runs from the river’s source in Gloucestershire to London. Just south of Godstow is Binsey, which was the home of Ms Prickett, Alice’s governess – and the model for the Queen of Hearts. Binsey Church is built next to a well, which was the basis for the Treacle Well mentioned by the Mad Hatter, where three little girls lived. 

Charles Dodgson was born in 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire. His father was the perpetual curate from 1827 to 1843 at All Saints Church, and there is a fine stained glass window in Dodgson’s memory featuring characters from Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. It is said that the mythical characters carved into the church pulpit, together with traditional Cheshire stories influenced Dodgson. Just 10 miles south from Daresbury is the circular Cheshire Cycleway.  

Carroll was also famous for his nonsense poetry, which was inspired by walking around his surroundings. He regularly visited Whitburn Sands, Tyne and Wear on the north and wrote all but the first verse of the poem Jabberwocky and The Walrus and The Carpenter here. The Coast to Coast Cycle route is nearby at Tynemouth and Sunderland. In 1874, while visiting his sisters in Guildford, Surrey, Carroll went on a walk, where he began to compose The Hunting of the Snark, one of his longest and celebrated nonsense poems. The nearby Surrey Hills are good for cycling and walking, as is the North Downs Way that runs close to Guildford.

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