The Road Goes ever on and on: Re-reading The Lord of the Rings in Lockdown

Perhaps naturally for an academic who researches mobility, who owns a boisterous golden retriever, and who lives in the countryside, I have spent much of my time over the summer months walking. First, under lockdown, then later, working from home, reeling like many from the topsy-turvy impacts of the lockdown on exams and marking, I found walking with my dog a chance to step back from the stresses of the moment. As someone who has spent little time in my home village due to work-related travels, despite having lived in the
Norfolk countryside for almost four years, walking through the fields and down the lanes hereabouts became for me a means of getting to know the area, its furrows and corners, its secrets and gestures, however belatedly.