British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car | Page 3

by many and expensive carriage
drives if he wishes to see the most beautiful country and many of the
most interesting places. As Professor Goldwin Smith says, "Railways
in England do not follow the lines of beauty in very many cases," and
the opportunity afforded of really seeing England from a railway car
window is poor indeed. 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