Walden is set at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, where Henry David Thoreau lived from July 1845 to September 1847. This route follows the book from his cabin site to the railroad, Concord's jail, Flint's Pond, Baker Farm and Brister's Hill.
Thoreau compressed his two years into a single calendar year in the book. The stops follow the order of its chapters, and most of the paths and ponds can still be walked around Walden Pond State Reservation. Several spots in the woods are only approximately placed on the map.
The Shire is partly Birmingham: Tolkien said Sarehole Mill and its pond inspired the Mill at Hobbiton, and the wooded Moseley Bog beside it fed the ancient forests of his books. Both lie in the suburbs of Birmingham, England.
The route follows Tolkien from his childhood at Sarehole and Moseley Bog, past Perrott's Folly in Edgbaston, to North Oxford, where he wrote The Hobbit, and the Eagle and Child pub, where the Inklings met. Some links are Tolkien's own words; the Folly is only a suggestion.
