Walking to Bunyan's Oak

Books lead me places I never expected to go. Following Christopher Somerville's Walks in the Country on Sunday so us pacing around from the Bedfordshire village of Harlington, first stop Bunyan's Oak. It's a gnarled dead giant, wrapped by an elder tree, under which John Bunyan preached before his arrest, going on to write the Pilgrims' Progress in jail.
We're off to Berkhamstead today (the miserably named 'Bank Holiday Monday' here in England), to traipse around an area of medieval beech wood. I realized long ago that one of my favourite aspects of any novel is that they take me outdoors. Guidebooks do this in a very practical way.