In this touching memoir of late-flowering romance, set against the backdrop of the rolling Dorset countryside, and with the counterpoint of a Thomas Hardy love story, Andrew Norman relates a captivating and tender tale. When he set out on his bicycle one sunny summer day in early June, from his hometown of Poole, in Dorset in southern England, for the village of Studland, on a date to meet a lady called Rachel from nearby Swanage, he could not have imagined that this event would change his life. To his delight, he discovered that Rachel shared his love for the works of Dorset poet and writer Thomas Hardy, and when they discovered that he had written his novel The Hand of Ethelberta in Swanage, they decided to retrace the steps of the books eponymous heroine.