Godric's Hollow

[Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer]

No: HPFGUIDX 4388

Hi --

Steve Vander Ark wrote:

> We don't know Hagrid's route from Godric's Hollow to Privet Drive in
> the slightest, and we can deduce absolutely nothing about the
> location of Godric's Hollow from the books. The mention of Harry
> falling asleep over Bristol tells us nothing. Godric's Hollow could
> be anywhere, and not just in England.

This *is* all true enough Steve, but the discussions over at Yahoo
(probably before you joined) had to do with figuring out whether any of
the towns/villages in the UK had a name that might be similar to
Godric's Hollow that might give some indication of location.  We had,
with Nick's prompting, just learned that Ottery St. Catchpole is quite
similar to Ottery St. Marie.  Ottery St. Marie is also just east of
Exeter, where Jo attended university.  Just west of Exeter, is a village
called Chudleigh (close, of course, to the "Chudley" Cannons, Ron's
favorite Quidditch team).  We deduced from these clues that the Burrow
was likely located in the Exeter vicinity.  This location has since been
found to be inconsistent (surprise!) with the taxi rides from the Burrow
into King's Cross Station in GoF.  I think it's just a goof -- they
should have taken BritRail into King's Cross rather than taxis.  The
other evidence is overwhelming that the Burrow is supposed to be in the
Exeter vicinity.

So, back to the origination of the Godric's Hollow speculation.  The
only thing we found that was close was a village in far eastern Wales
called Godre'r-graig.  There might well be another village that ends in
"Hollow" that would be closer, although I did line-by-line search my
atlas for any villages that began with the letter "G" and ended in the
word "Hollow."  Nothing.  Noone found an online method of searching
effectively at that time.  So, those of us who were participating in
this discussion (mainly me and Nick as I recall) looked at Godre'r-graig
with some interest.  It does seem that if one flew from that village
toward Surrey, one would be forced to fly over Bristol.  Almost
certainly if one is flying to Surrey from somewhere & flies over
Bristol, the originating location is most likely in Wales.  If you were
coming from say, Leeds, to Surrey, you wouldn't divert west to fly over
Bristol.  If not Wales, then I think it would need to be Ireland to make
any sense.  IMO anyway.

> Hagrid almost certainly didn't go directly from Godric's Hollow to
> Privet Drive, since it took him MOST OF A DAY to get there (or more
> likely, he went somewhere else first).

Or, he hung out in Godric's Hollow for a day, watching to see what all
happened so he could report back to Dumbledore.  In any case, I still
maintain that flying *over* Bristol to Surrey requires that the
originating location be west/northwest of Bristol -- that is, Wales,
Ireland or perhaps the Hebrides Islands off to the far northwest of the
UK.

Penny


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