If you missed the Autumn Walking Festival in Alton, England, next door to the Hampshire village where Jane Austen spent the last eight years of her life, you’ve got a second chance of sorts: A set of new walking and cycling trails has recently been inaugurated in Overton, England, not far from the village where Austen spent the first twenty-five years of her life.
Visitors to the five Overton Jane Austen Trails, which range from 2.5 to 12 miles in length, are “following in the footsteps of Jane Austen, her friends and family,” the project’s website notes. Each route covers territory that Austen certainly knew well, including the villages of Steventon, where she was born and grew up; Overton, where her oldest brother, James, served as curate; and Ashe, where her friend and mentor Anne Lefroy lived.
The shortest of the routes, the “Overton in Jane Austen’s Time” trail, stops at the local community center, formerly the post office where Jane Austen mailed her letters; at the White Hart coaching inn; and at James Austen’s church and rectory. Longer routes take in the church and parsonage in Deane, where the Austen parents lived early in their marriage, and the site of the now-demolished Steventon Rectory, where Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775.
The trail-making project, whose launch is pegged to this year’s Austen 250th anniversary, was spearheaded by a seven-member volunteer team and funded with a grant of nearly £16,000 (more than $19,000) from the local government. The website offers downloadable information leaflets and detailed route instructions, and trail markers along the way guide walkers and cyclists.
Like other Austen 250 projects, the Overton effort grew out of a combination of motives, its website notes: the altruistic (“to encourage walking for health and wellbeing in our surrounding countryside”), the patriotic (“to highlight the heritage and history of Overton, fostering a sense of pride in our place”), and the economic (“to put Overton on the Jane Austen map, so we can welcome visitors to our village to enjoy the shops, cafes, pubs and restaurants here”).
Unlike places with more tenuous Austen links, however, Overton deserves its spot on the Austen map. Jane Austen’s footsteps really did fall here.
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