Not that I really need inspiration for travel, but over the years, a few memorable films have provided inspiration for future trips.

After seeing The Big Chill in 1983, I vowed to visit Tidalholm, the magnificent house where the film was set, with its huge surrounding trees, dripping with Spanish Moss. Watching the credits carefully, it turned out to have been filmed in Beaufort, South Carolina, a very picturesque small town between Savannah, Ga. and Charleston, S.C. It took many years and some research, but we eventually took a wonderful trip to all three of these places. As it later turned out, while we were visiting Beaufort, filming was going on in town at that very moment. Of course, we didn't know what a hit the strangely named film was to become - it was called Forest Gump! Beaufort has also been the film location for other films, including Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, (both novels by Pat Conroy).

The French Lieutenant's Woman, with its sweeping scenery, provided the inspiration for a trip to Devon, Cornwall and Dorset. Flying into Exeter, we made Lyme Regis our first overnight stop. The village was everything that we imagined, and it was fun to stroll to the end of The Cobb (the headland where Meryl Streep shot that hooded backward glance at Jeremy Irons). Walking on ahead and dodging the sea spray, I pulled my windbreaker hood up, and tried hard for that same dramatic look, although it was a bit hard to do wearing jeans and walking shoes, instead of a black floor-length cape. In our photo album, my husband has labelled that shot "The Canadian Engineer's Woman".

I'm curious to know whether other Ziners have found travel inspiration in either modern-day or earlier films.

Margaret in Toronto in the middle of a serious snow storm