When a new steam train connected Paddington to St Ives, Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf's father, decided that taking a family house at the tip of England would benefit the whole family. So, packing up the entire household - children, dogs, servants and books – the Stephens travelled West. Talland House would be their deeply loved holiday home for 3 months every year.

From Gurnard's Head to Zennor, the young Virginia learnt to stride out on ambitiously long walks over rugged gorsy cliff paths and lonely granite-strewn moors. She would never stop re-writing these landscapes of early happiness - in her novels, her diaries, her memoirs; and she would keep coming back – alone or with family and friends – 'bringing the sheaves' of her adult life back to the places of her childhood.

Woolf's walking was the counterpart to her imaginative roaming, and the rhythm of her steps would often set the pace of her prose. Alexandra Harris sets out to follow some of her paths by the sea with writer Michael Bird.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2015. Show less