Loddiswell

Loddiswell is the small Devon village that stands at the true beginning of Harold Fry's pilgrimage. It was from just outside the pub at Loddiswell, on the B3196, that Harold telephoned his wife Maureen to tell her he had made a promise to walk all the way to Berwick-upon-Tweed. The call itself was remarkable: Maureen, who had feared he had suffered a heart attack or lost his memory, was instead met with a husband who sounded genuinely pleased, insisting he had only drunk a lemonade but felt better than he had in years. The village thus becomes the threshold between Harold's old life of quiet, unremarkable retirement and the extraordinary journey that will come to define him.

The Threshold of the Journey

Harold's arrival in Loddiswell was itself unplanned. After his telephone call to the hospice, he had simply followed the rising and turning of the B3196, passing fields, houses, trees, and the bridge over the River Avon, with none of it making any real impression except as one thing less between himself and Berwick. He took regular breaks to calm his breathing, several times adjusting his yachting shoes and mopping his head. It was at the Loddiswell Inn that he stopped to quench his thirst and encountered the satellite-dish salesman who would unwittingly become the first witness to his intention. When Harold confided his plans, the chap was so bowled over that he clapped Harold on the back and told everyone in the bar to listen up; when Harold offered the briefest outline — that he was going to head up England until he hit Berwick — the satellite-dish chap roared, "Good on you, mate." It was with those words in mind that Harold rushed out to telephone his wife, hoping she might say the same thing. She did not; her response was the cutting "I think not," and after speaking to her his steps had grown heavier.

The First Night's Rest

From the pub, Harold arrived at a small hotel with palm trees growing at a lopsided angle as if cowering from the coastal wind, and enquired about a room. Though he was used to sleeping alone, being in a hotel was a novelty; when he had worked for the brewery, he had always been home by nightfall. He slipped into unconsciousness almost as soon as he was lying down, enjoying his best sleep in many years, with none of the pictures that regularly came to him in the dark. The room itself was unfamiliar — the mattress had both firmed up and moved overnight, an unfamiliar rod of light fell across the carpet, and the walls were lightly sprigged with flowers. It was then that he remembered he was in a hotel just north of Loddiswell, and that he was walking to Berwick because Queenie Hennessy must not die.

The Body Prepares

The morning in Loddiswell brought Harold's first deliberate attention to his own body as an instrument of pilgrimage. Leaning against the soft upholstered headboard, he crooked his left knee, clasping the ankle in his hands and drawing it up as far along his leg as he could without losing balance. He slipped on his reading glasses for a closer inspection. The toes were soft and pale, a little tender around the nails and in the bulbous joint at the middle, with a possible blister on the way at the top of his heel. Considering his years and his lack of fitness, Harold was quietly proud, and he performed the same slow but thorough inspection of his right foot. "Not bad," he said. A few plasters and a good breakfast, and he would be ready. He imagined the nurse telling Queenie that he was walking, and that all she had to do was keep living. He could see the features of her face as if she were sitting in front of him: her dark eyes, her neat mouth, her black hair in tight curls. The picture was so vivid he could not understand why he was still in bed.

Leaving Loddiswell Behind

With the hotel behind him and few cars on the road, Harold felt acutely vulnerable, a single figure without his mobile phone. If he fell, or if someone sprang out of the bushes, who would hear his cries? A cracking of branches sent him scurrying forward, only to look back with his heart wildly beating and discover a pigeon regaining its balance in a tree. But as time passed and he found his rhythm, he began to feel more certain. England opened beneath his feet, and the feeling of freedom, of pushing into the unknown, was so exhilarating he had to smile. He was in the world by himself and nothing could get in the way or ask him to mow the lawn. He walked the single-track lanes, the walls of hedgerow so dense and high it was like journeying through a trench, and he was surprised how fast and angry cars seemed when one was not in them. He would head north towards South Brent, where he would find modest accommodation for the night, and from there follow the A38 to Exeter.

The Significance of the Place

Loddiswell holds its significance precisely because it is unremarkable. It is not a cathedral city or a famous landmark; it is simply the first place where Harold's promise became real, where a stranger's casual encouragement gave him the words to carry forward, and where his wife's cold dismissal taught him he would walk alone. The village stands as the point of no return, the place where the retired salesman with no walking boots, no compass, no map, and no change of clothes committed himself to a journey he had not known he was going to make until he started. In the geography of the novel, Loddiswell is the seed from which the entire pilgrimage grows — the first step of six hundred and twenty-seven miles, and the first night of the eighty-seven days that would carry Harold Fry from an ordinary man posting a letter to a pilgrim arriving at the gates of St Bernadine's Hospice.