I wish after he’d knocked Arthur Dent’s House down, Douglas Adams had stopped alluding to its whereabouts. After years and years of re-reads, I keep telling myself to give up, but the likely location for Arthur Dent’s House still tugs at me.
What we know:
1) House, country lane, outside a village with a Horse & Groom (name unimportant), does have neighbors across the way (with rosebushes to hover above), so it is not a lone house.
2) A few different exits off the A303 will lead to the village.
3) Taunton is “wonderfully close to him.”
4) When Arthur needed to buy a fancy computer, he could do so in Exeter (though it isn’t clear if that’s because it is the closest place to do so, or the easiest place to get to, or the biggest town?).
5) Stalbridge, the village where Adams’s Mum settled, and in The Frood where it was “explained where the condemned mill that started it all once stood,” (a reference that eludes me) is off the A303, but doesn’t seem near Taunton nor Exeter. This is where I begin to wonder…Did Douglas drive much? How WAS he at navigation?
This is where I begin to wonder…Did Douglas drive much? How WAS he at navigation?
6) The A303 turns into the A30 around Upottery in the middle of the Blackdown Hills AONB, which could presumably have “glistening Devon Hills” for Arthur to enjoy, given that East Devon AONB is just south of there.
7) “Cottington is, or rather was, an obscure and unsung little country hamlet in the West Country of England which was, for the last three years prior to the demolition of Earth, Arthur Dent’s home. If the Vogons had not shown up, Cottington was scheduled to be transformed into a service station for the very “splendid and worthwhile” New Beddingford bypass, with the village being transformed into the Cottington Service Station, despite the unpopularity of this project with the locals. The village has a small hotel with a saloon bar named the Horse and Groom.”
8) Cottington Mead is in Sidmouth, which would at least make sense for Exeter and Taunton.
9) Wikipedia and Google Maps believe New Beddingford and its bypass to be wholly fictional.
Given that Adams says in the book, “a person likes to keep track of his homes,” if you are a UK Adams fan, what conclusions have you come to? Or, how you hold the geographies of all this peacefully in your mind, without the actual *NOT KNOWING* driving you batty.
Please see fit to point out any errors in my logic or lack in my reading.
What do you think?