Probably the most common question I get from readers is: ‘Where is Saltbury?’  Of course they completely understand that it doesn’t exist, at least in the world as we know it.  They have read the little afterthoughts in the books and the piece here on my website called ‘The Saltbury Universe’, so they know that Saltbury and my characters exist in a parallel, slightly different universe, not in ours.

‘Even so’, people say, ‘you give so much detail about the geography of the town and its surroundings that it ought to be possible to pin-point the spot on a map where Saltbury would be if we could get into its universe’.  Well yes, in theory, if you think I’m the sort of nice person who wouldn’t, say, play about with the geography of Wiltshire as a whole, and wouldn’t, for example, move the watershed of the rivers Thames and Avon ten miles to the west!

In fact people find that it would be quite impossible for the Saltbury I describe to exist in our universe.  It would be a market town of about 50,000 souls set about halfway between Swindon and Chipenham.  It would sit just to the west of a significant chalk ridge, just south of the M4 motorway and right on the line of the former Great Western Railway to Bristol.  Its Medieval heart lies at the point where the Roman road to London bridged a significant tributary of the Thames, and some miles to its east is a former Roman town, which I call Dowchester.  But no such combination exists in our Wiltshire.

I could tell you exactly where Saltbury is.  I could even give you the map reference.  If you are familiar with the British National Grid system, it’s at roughly SU 0180.  If you look up the Ordnance Survey map, you can see the contours of the hill up which South Street runs, and the way the railway loops round to pass just west of Wyeburn.  You can see the ridge to the east where Tina loves to cycle to admire the view.  You can see the motorway to the north, but you can also see that almost nothing else fits, because I cheated and our Wiltshire simply doesn’t work like that.  Not to worry though, Saltbury’s Wiltshire does, so all is still well!  Happy hunting.