The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: December thirteenth, with a view from the top of the hill.

County Dorest in the South of England is often called Hardy country. Dorset's landscape both inspired Thomas Hardy and served as Wessex, the fictional county in which he set his works, often using thinly disguised places and people. In fact, some modern maps mark Hardy's pseudonymous place names beneath the real one.

For example, in The Trumpet-Major, Hardy paints a vivid portrait of a Haggardon Hill. In actuality it's a place called Eggardon Hill, an oval shaped plateau on the brow of a broad, green escarpment that falls several hundred feet in a patchwork of fields and woods. Apart from the occasional electric pole peeping over the treetops, this view of Eggardon Hill hasn't changed since Hardy's day, or for that matter, the 15th century, when hedges and stone walls first enclosed the land.

The hill top is ringed by wide, deep trenches, moats and other earthworks from pre-historic times when it was a fortified settlement that commanded the countryside as surely as any Aztec temple.

Now Eggardon Hill is the epitome of English countryside, a landscape whose range of summer hues render adjectives like green inadequate. Against the prevailing verdancy, spots of emerald and olive dot the tilled fields like drops from a pointillist's paint brush. Lilac flowers and thistleheads of episcopal purple tower over sunflower yellow dandelions and mauve clover pom poms. Slopes are speckled white with sheep. A slash of brown near a wood is an antlered stag.

Though Eggardon Hill may not dazzle the eye, is an epitome of England, a landscape that makes even strangers feel at home.

A native son pens a loving portrait of Eggardon Hill in this issue of the magazine, National Geographic Traveler, a supporter of our program. You can register for a free, sample copy on our home page. FMI Explore Thomas Hardy's Dorset at www.southwest.uk.com/hardy-country. West Dorset Tourism www.westdorset.com. For a virtual guided tour of Eggardon Hill, www.thory25.freeserv.co.uk/eggardon.html

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