Was Tolkien a Hiker? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

***Mister Underhill*** · 01-24-2002, 05:38 PM

Paging through Letters a bit further, I found an expanded account of this Swiss hiking/camping trip in Letter #306, if you can get access to a copy. Tolkien says he was 19 when it happened. The countryside, the trip, and a few experiences he had on it obviously had a profound and lasting effect on him; writing some fifty-six years later, he says, "Our wanderings mainly on foot in a party of 12 are not now clear in sequence, but leave many vivid pictures as clear as yesterday (that is as clear as an old man's remoter memories become)."

01-24-2002, 05:38 PM	#6
*Mister Underhill* Dread Horseman Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Behind you! Posts: 2,744	Paging through Letters a bit further, I found an expanded account of this Swiss hiking/camping trip in Letter #306, if you can get access to a copy. Tolkien says he was 19 when it happened. The countryside, the trip, and a few experiences he had on it obviously had a profound and lasting effect on him; writing some fifty-six years later, he says, "Our wanderings mainly on foot in a party of 12 are not now clear in sequence, but leave many vivid pictures as clear as yesterday (that is as clear as an old man's remoter memories become)."