I recently had some family visitors: two adults and two children. The parents had to go into New York City for business meetings. I got to look after the two children. I decided to read “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” to them. I’ve always loved this story and I thought they might find it interesting.

We’d been reading for about 15 minutes when the parents announced they were leaving. So I decided to ask them to drop us in Sleepy Hollow so that we could continue there. Our first stop was the Philipsburg Manor. Unfortunately it was closed, but we were able to continue reading while sitting by the millpond (see picture above), which is mentioned in the story.

The girls by the millpond.

I thought it might be interesting to finish of the story in The Old Dutch Burial Ground (also mentioned in the story) so we crossed the road and passed over the Headless Horseman Bridge, one of two candidates for the site of the bridge in the story.

The Old Dutch Burial Ground where we sat and finished of the story.

The girls by a Clog shed.

After we finished the story I set the girls a challenge: to find the grave of Katerina Van Tassel, one of the main characters in the story. When I first looked for this grave it took me an age to find it. It took them about five minutes although admittedly we were sitting quite close to its location.

After that we continued into the cemetery and up the grave of Washington Irving, the author of the story.

Our final stop was at the second possible location for the Headless Horseman Bridge. I much prefer this to earlier one.

We thought of walking around in the cemetery for a while, but it was a very hot and humid day so we decided to go at get some refreshments at J.P. Doyles before heading home.