I’m a reader, and a traveler – of both the “armchair” and reality persuasions.  The turning of pages transports me to other places and times and introduces me to new people who, sometimes, become almost as real as the people I meet in my day-to-day life.  Reading has also enhanced my travel experiences tremendously; for instance, I told you about books I’ve loved that are set in the regions I visited on my recent road trip around southern England.

But it was on that road trip that I made an important discovery: it works both ways.  Reading enhances travel, of course, but travel can also enhance reading.

Obvious?  Probably.  It wasn’t the first time I’ve tried to match my book choices to my travel – I carried A Year In Provence and The Phantom of the Opera to France with me last year.  But for some reason, it was in Bath that I really understood that walking in characters’ literal footsteps can enrich a reading experience as much as it enriches a travel experience.

It was the first morning of the trip.  Hubby and I were still in a bit of a jet-lagged haze, but we trooped on out of our B&B, determined to experience the best that Bath has to offer.  We started with the wonderful – and FREE! – walking tour that Bath residents put on several times each day.  As we hiked all over Bath, our guide regaled us with stories from the city’s history.  We walked in the footsteps of Romans, early Christians, queens who have visited for the curative waters and celebrities who have made their homes in Bath’s exclusive Georgian buildings.

It was on a serene gravel walk behind one row of those exclusive buildings that I got the first hit of a reader’s revelation.  Our guide mentioned that Jane Austen had set two books in Bath – Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.  I’ve read Northanger Abbey many times but had never picked up Persuasion until I started it on the plane ride to London – choosing it precisely because it was set in Bath.  Our guide explained that the two main characters’ “heart to heart” (you know, that quintessential Jane Austen conversation where the characters confess their love for one another) happened on the very gravel walk on which we were standing.

As it happened, I didn’t get to that scene in the book until several days after we had already left Bath.  But when I did, when “dear Aunt Jane” sent her characters down the gravel walk and let them pour out their hearts to one another, I felt a special thrill from having JUST been there.  And even more than that, I could picture the spot exactly in my mind.  I set the characters down in the place where I had stood and imagined them into a setting I knew from having just seen it with my own eyes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the imaginative part of reading.  I like conjuring up the characters and their settings in my mind.  And with a good descriptive writer like Jane Austen, you don’t really need a personal experience to bring her books to life.  But it certainly did help.