On May 26th 1801 Jane Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra: ‘I walked yesterday morning with Mrs Chamberlayne to Lyncombe and Widcombe  – Mrs Chamberlayne’s pace was not quite so magnificent on this second trial as in the first; it was nothing more than I could keep up with, without effort, & for many, many Yards together on a raised narrow footpath I led the way. – The Walk was very beautiful as my companion agreed, whenever I made the observation.’ Some of us from Persephone Books had a similar walk yesterday: we began (twenty minutes walk uphill from Bath Spa Station) by admiring the church and, next to it, Widcombe Manor; both would have looked exactly the same when Jane Austen and Mrs Chamberlayne walked past.