British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car | Page 3

The tourist must keep a constant eye on the time-tables, and in many of the more retired places he will have to spend a day when an hour would suffice quite as well could he get away. If he travels first-class, it is quite expensive, and the only advantage secured is that he generally has a compartment to himself, the difference in accommodations between first and third-class on the longer distance trains being insignificant. But if he travels third-class, he very often finds himself crowded into a small compartment with people in whom, to say the least, he has nothing in common. One seldom gets the real sentiment and beauty of a place in approaching it by railway. I am speaking, of course, of the tourist who endeavors to crowd as much as he can into a comparatively short time. To the one who remains several days in a place, railroad traveling is less objectionable. My remarks concerning railroad travel in England are made merely from the point of comparison with a pleasure journey by motor, and having covered the greater part of the country in both ways, I am qualified to some extent to speak from experience.
For a young man or party of young men who are traveling through Britain on a summer's vacation, the bicycle affords an excellent and expeditious method of getting over the country, and offers nearly all the advantages of the motor car, provided the rider is vigorous and expert enough to do the wheeling without fatigue. The motor cycle is still better from this point of view, and many thousands of them are in use on English roads, while cyclists may be counted by the tens of thousands. But the bicycle is out of the question for an extended tour by a party which includes ladies. The amount of impedimenta which must be carried along, and the many long hills which are encountered on the English roads, will put the cycle out of the question in such cases.
In the motor car, we have the most modern and thorough means of traversing the highways and byways of Britain in the limits of a single summer, and it is my purpose in this book, with little pretensions to literary style, to show how satisfactorily this may be done by a mere layman. To the man who drives his own car and who at the outstart knows very little about the English roads and towns, I wish to undertake to show how in a trip of five thousand miles, occupying about fifty days, actual traveling time, I covered much of the most beautiful country in England and Scotland and visited a large proportion of the most interesting and historic places in the Kingdom. I think it can be clearly demonstrated that this method of touring will give opportunities for enjoyment and for gaining actual knowledge of the people and country that can hardly be attained in any other way.
The motor car affords expeditious and reasonably sure means of getting over the country--always ready when you are ready, subservient to your whim to visit some inaccessible old ruin, flying over the broad main highways or winding more cautiously in the unfrequented country byways--and is, withal, a method of locomotion to which the English people have become tolerant if not positively friendly. Further, I am sure it will be welcome news to many that the expense of such a trip, under ordinary conditions, is not at all exorbitant or out of the reach of the average well-to-do citizen.
Those who have traveled for long distances on American roads can have no conception whatever of the delights of motor traveling on the British highways. I think there are more bad roads in the average county, taking the States throughout, than there are in all of the United Kingdom, and the number of defective bridges in any county outside of the immediate precincts of a few cities, would undoubtedly be many times greater than in the whole of Great Britain. I am speaking, of course, of the more traveled highways and country byways. There are roads leading into the hilly sections that would not be practicable for motors at all, but, fortunately, these are the very roads over which no one would care to go. While the gradients are generally easier than in the States, there are in many places sharp hills where the car must be kept well under control. But the beauty of it is that in Britain one has the means of being thoroughly warned in advance of the road conditions which he must encounter.
The maps are perfect to the smallest detail and drawn to a large scale, showing the relative importance of all the roads; and upon them are plainly marked the hills that are styled "dangerous." These