and clear. We passed through bush-clad banks, where furze and
yellow-tasselled broom were growing, and trees in abundance. Before we
knew where we were we had trotted into Kenilworth. We stabled here and
dined, and waited long enough to have a peep at the castle. This grand
old pile is historical; no need, therefore, for me to say a word about
it.
After rounding the corner in our exit from Kenilworth, and standing
straight away for Coventry, the view from the glen at the bridge, with
the castle on the left, a village and church on the rising ground, and
villas and splendid trees on the right, made a good beginning to the
"finest drive in all England."
There is many a pretty peep 'twixt Kenilworth and Coventry.
The road is broad and good, and so tree-lined as often to merit the name
of avenue. Especially is this the case at the third milestone, from
near which the straight road can be seen for fully a mile and a half,
shaded by the grandest of trees. This is a view not easily forgotten.
With all the beauty of this drive, however, it is too civilised to be
romantic. The hedges are trimmed, and we actually noticed a man paring
the grass on the edge of the footpath.
_June 26th_.--We are up very early this morning, for in Coventry the
road-fiend rides rampant and in all his glory. They have steam-trams,
which not only go puffing through the town, but for five miles out
through the coal district itself. We must avoid them, get the start of
them. So we are up and away long before seven.
We arrived here last night, and through the kindness of the editor of
the _Tricyclist_ got permission to draw in for the night into the large
cricket and sports ground. The gates were closed at nine, and we had
the keys. I was lord, therefore, of all I surveyed.
On the cinder-path last night a weary-looking but strong old man of over
sixty was walking. He is doing or trying to do 1,000 miles in a shorter
time than the pedestrian Weston. It is said that if he succeeds the
brewers will pay him 1,000 pounds, and give him a free public-house,
because he trains on beer instead of on tea, as did Weston!
The road leading northward from Coventry is terribly rough and rutty,
and cut up with the trams from the mines, but being lined with trees,
among which are many copper-beeches, it is not devoid of interest.
It is cold, bitterly cold and raw, with a strong north wind blowing, and
we are obliged to wear top-coats on the _coupe_. Fancy top-coats at
midsummer!
The country becomes unpleasant-looking even before the trams end. At
Redworth, where I drew up for a short time to make purchases, swarms of
rough, dark, and grimy men surrounded us, but all were polite and most
civil.
On the hilltop we again draw up in front of an inn. The panting horses
want water, and we ourselves have till now had no breakfast.
"Good beds for travellers round the corner." This was a ticket in a
window. I go round the corner. Here is a little show of some kind and
a caravan. But the show business cannot be much of a success in this
Black Country, for these caravanites look poverty-stricken. From a rude
picture on a ragged screen I learn that this caravan is devoted to a
horse-taming or Rarey show. The _dramatis personae_ consist of a long,
lean, unwholesome-looking lad with straggling yellow hair, a still
longer and still leaner lad without any visible hair, and a short man
with grey moustache. But this latter comes to the gate bearing in his
arms a boy-child of ten years, worn to a skeleton, sickly, and probably
dying. The boy shivers, the short man speaks soothingly to him, and
bears him back into a dingy tent. I do not relish my breakfast after
this sad sight.
We are not sorry when we are away from the immediate vicinity of the
mines, and unlimbered by the roadside near the old Red Gate Inn. We
have been following the ancient Roman road for many miles, and a good
one it is, and very obliging it was of the Romans to make us such a
road.
The inn is altogether so quiet and cosy that I determine to stable here
for the night, and pass the day writing or strolling about.
So we cross the road and draw the Wanderer up beneath a lordly oak. In
crossing we pass from Warwick into Leicestershire.
Pea-blossom is coughing occasionally. It is not a pleasant sound to
have to listen to. She may be better to-morrow, for it will be
Saturday, and a long and toilsome day is before us.
It is evening now; a walk of a mile has brought me to a hilltop, if hill
it can be called. The view from here is by no means spirit-stirring,
but quiet and calming to the mind. What a delightful difference between
lying here and in that awful bustling inn yard at Leamington!
It is a country of irregular green fields, hedge-bounded, and
plentifully sprinkled with oak and ash-trees and tall silver-green
aspens; a country of rolling hills and flats, but no fens, with here and
there a pretty old-fashioned farm peeping through the foliage.
There is not a cloud in the sky, the sun is sinking in a yellow haze,
the robin and the linnet are singing beside me among the hawthorns, and
down in the copse yonder a blackbird is fluting.
A pheasant is calling to its mate among the ferns; it is time apparently
for pheasants to retire. Time for weasels too, for across the road runs
a mother-weasel with a string of young ones all in a row. The
procession had been feeding in that sweetly-scented beanfield, and is
now bound for bed, and I myself take the hint and go slowly back to the
Wanderer. But Hurricane Bob has found a mole, and brings that along.
It is not dead, so I let it go. How glad it must feel!
At nine o'clock the sun had set, but left in the north-west a harbinger
of a fine morning. What delicious tints! What delicate suffusion of
yellows, greens, and blues! Just as the sun was sinking red towards the
horizon uprose the moon in the east, round and full, and in appearance
precisely like the setting sun. The trees on the horizon were mere
black shapes, the birds had ceased to sing, and bats were flitting
about. At eleven o'clock, it was a bright clear night with wavy dancing
phosphorescent-like gleams of light in the north--the Aurora!
_June 11th_.--Started at eight o'clock _en route_ by cross roads for
Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Shortly afterwards passed a needle-shaped monument
to George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends. It is a very humble
one, and stands in a wooded corner almost surrounded by hawthorn. Went
through the village of Fenny Drayton. Why called "Fenny," I wonder? It
is a little hamlet, very old, and with a pretty and very old church, but
I had no time to get up to the steeple.
Road narrow but good. A glorious morning, with a blue sky and delicious
breeze.
Greensward at each side of the road, with ragged hedges and stunted oaks
and ashes; roses in the hedgerows, golden celandine on the sward, and
tall crimson silenes everywhere. By-and-bye the country opens, and we
come upon a splendid view; and here is a sight--a hedgerow of roses
nearly a mile long! Here are as many of these wildly beautiful flowers
as would drape Saint Paul's Cathedral, dome and all.
We pass Sibson, with its very quaint old inn and little ivy-covered
church surmounted by a stone cross; and Twycross, a most healthy and
pretty rural village. There we unlimbered to dine, and in the afternoon
went on towards our destination. Past Gopsal Park, with its quaint old
lodge-gates and grand trees, on through dark waving woods of beech, of
oak, and ash, on through lanes with hedgerows at each side, so tall that
they almost meet at the top. We cross the railway now to avoid a steep
bridge. Meesham is far away on the hill before us, and looks very
romantic and pretty from the bridge. Its ancient church rears its
steeple skyward, high over the houses that cluster round it, giving the
place the appearance of a cathedral city in miniature. The romance
vanishes, though, as soon as we enter the town. One long, steep street
leads through it, its houses are of brick and most uninteresting, and
the public-houses are so plentifully scattered about that thirst must be
a common complaint here.
Ashby-de-la-Zouch lies above us and before us at last, and strangely
picturesque it looks. Bows of queer-shaped trees are on each side of
us; up yonder, in front, is a graveyard on a braeland; farther to the
right a tall church spire, and flanking all, and peeping through the
greenery of trees, is the ruined castle.
Market-day in Ashby, and we are mobbed whenever we stop to do some
shopping.
The church here is well worthy of a visit; so too is the castle, but
tourists ought to refresh their minds before spending a few days here by
once more reading "Ivanhoe."
It was hard, uphill work from Ashby; drag, drag, drag; horses tired,
Pea-blossom limping, and all weary.
At the hilltop we came into quite a Highland country, and thence we
could catch glimpses of lovely scenery and far-off blue hills.
The effects of the sunlight on the green oak woods and the yellow ashes
were very charming.
Lount at last; a humble inn, quiet, kindly people, and a little meadow.
CHAPTER NINE.
A QUIET SUNDAY AT LOUNT--A VISIT TO A POTTERY--BEESTON HALL--A BROILING
DAY.
"How still the morning of this hallowed day!
Hushed is the voice of rural labour,
The ploughboy's whistle and the milkmaid's song."
June 28th.
The country is indeed a Highlands in miniature. I might describe the
scenery in this way: Take a sheet of paper and thereon draw irregular
lines, across and across, up and down, in any conceivable direction.
These lines, then, shall represent blackthorn hedges bounding fields of
flowering grass and hay. Place trees in your picture anywhere, and,
here and there, a wood of dwarfed oak, and dot the field-nooks with
picturesque-looking cattle-huts. In the centre let there be a cluster
of irregularly-built brick-tiled houses and the domes of a pottery
works. This, then, is Lount and its surroundings, where we are now
bivouacked. But to complete the sketch there must be footpaths
meandering through the meadows, with gaps in the hedges for rustic
stiles. Nor must the cattle be forgotten.
And all the country visible from this point is broken up into round
hills, and each field is a collection of smaller hills, shaped like
waves of a storm-tossed ocean.
How still and quiet it is! And above the green of fields and woods is a
blue, blue sunny sky. Larks are singing up yonder, their songs mingling
sweetly with the chiming of the church bells that comes floating over
the hills, rising and falling as the breeze does, now high and clear,
now soft and far-away like.
I had the caravan half-filled this morning with bright-eyed, wondering
children. A parent brought me a red cotton handkerchief.
"T'missus," he explained, "was makin' oop a pie, and I thought upon thee
loike."
It was kindly, and I couldn't refuse the gift, though gooseberry pies
form no part of the Wanderer's _menu_.
Ten o'clock pm.--The full moon has just risen over the dark oak woods; a
strangely white dense fog has filled all the hollows--a fog you can
almost stretch out your hands and touch. The knolls in the fields all
appear over it, looking like little islands in the midst of an inland
sea.
The corncrake is sounding his rattle in the hayfields--a veritable voice
of the night is he--and not another sound is to be heard.
Passed a garden a few minutes ago while walking out. Such a sight!
Glowworms in thousands; far more lovely than fireflies in an Indian
jungle.
To bed.
_June 29th_.--We got under way by 8:30, after a brief visit to the
Coleorton Pottery. This place has an ugly enough appearance outside,
but is very interesting internally. The proprietor kindly showed my
coachman and me over the works. We saw the great heaps of blue clay
that had been dug from the hillside and left exposed for weeks to the
weather, the tanks in which it is mixed with water, the machinery for
washing and sifting it, the clay being finally boiled to the consistency
of putty. An old man took dabs of this putty and cast them on a
revolving table, smiling as he did so as he watched our wondering looks,
for lo! cups and saucers and teapots seemed to grow up under his
fingers, and a whole tea-set was produced more quickly than one could
have brewed a cup of tea.
A somewhat misty morning, but roads good though hilly, and scenery
romantic. But at Castle Donington, a long brick town, the scene
changes. Away go hill and dale, away goes all romance, and we pass
through a flat country, with nothing in it to enlist sympathy save the
trees and rose-clad hedges.
But soon again comes another change, and we cross the broad and silvery
Trent, stopping, however, on the bridge to admire the view.
We arrive at Long Eaton, and encamp by the roadside to cook dinner.
Rows of ugly brick houses, a lazy canal with banks black with coal dust;
the people here look as inactive as does their canal. Took the wrong
turning and went miles out of our way.
We were stormed on our exit from Long Eaton by hordes of Board School
children. They clustered round us like locusts, they swarmed like bees,
and hung to the caravan in scores. No good my threatening them with the
whip. I suppose they knew I did not mean much mischief, and one score
was only frightened off to make room for another.
At Beeston, near Nottingham, I got talking to a tricyclist; a visit to a
caravan followed, and then an introduction to a wealthy lace merchant.
The latter would not hear of my going two miles farther to an inn. I
must come into his grounds. So here in a cosy corner of the lawn of
Beeston Hall lies the Wanderer, overshadowed by giant elms and glorious
purple beeches, and the lace manufacturer and his wife are simply
hospitality personified.
Such is the glorious uncertainty of a gentleman gipsy's life--one night
bivouacked by a lonely roadside in a black country, another in a
paradise like this.
_July 2nd_.--A broiling hot day--almost too hot to write or think. At
present we are encamped on the road, two miles from Worksop to the
south. Tired though the horses were, we pushed on and on for miles,
seeking shade but finding none; and now we have given up, and stand in
the glaring sunshine. Roads are of whitest limestone, and, though there
is little wind, every wheel of every vehicle raises a dust and a powder
that seem to penetrate our very pores. We are all languid, drowsy,
lethargic. Polly the parrot alone appears to enjoy the heat and the
glare. The haymakers in yonder field are lazy-looking, silent, and
solemn--a melting solemnity; the martins on that single telegraph-wire
rest and pant open-mouthed, while the cattle in the meadow, with tails
erect, go flying from end to end and back again in a vain attempt to
escape from the heat and the flies.
But the flowers that grow by the wayside and trail over the hedges revel
in the sunshine--the purple vetches, the red clover, the yellow
wild-pea, and the starry Margueritas. Roses in sheets are spread over
the hawthorn fences, and crimson poppies dot the cornfields. The white
clover is alive with bees. This seems a bee country; everybody at
present is either drumming bees or whitewashing cottages.
Got up to-day and had breakfast shortly after six. The kindly landlord
of the Greyhound, Mr Scothern, and genial Mr Tebbet, one of his Grace
the Duke of Portland's head clerks, had promised to drive me through the
forest grounds of Welbeck.
As the day is, so was the morning, though the sun's warmth was then
pleasant enough.
Our drive would occupy some two hours and a half, and in that time we
would see many a "ferlie," as the Scotch say. The bare impossibility of
giving the reader anything like a correct account of this most enjoyable
ride impresses me while I write, and I feel inclined to throw down my
pen. I shall not do so, however, but must leave much unsaid. If any
one wishes to see the country around here as I have seen it this
morning, and wander in the forest and enjoy Nature in her home of homes,
he must come to Welbeck in summer. Never mind distance; come, you will
have something to dream pleasantly about for many a day.
A visit to the great irrigation canal, by which all the drainage from
Mansfield is carried along, and utilised by being allowed to flood
meadows, might not appear a very romantic way of beginning a summer
morning's outing. But it was interesting nevertheless. The meadows
which are periodically flooded are wondrously green; three crops of hay
are taken from each every season. They are on the slope, the canal
running along above. The pure water that drains from these meadows
finds its way into a river or trout stream that meanders along beneath
them, and is overhung by rocks and woodland. Fish in abundance are
caught here, and at present are being used to stock ponds and lochs on
the duke's estate.
We soon crossed this stream by a Gothic bridge, and plunged into what I
may call a new forest. There are fine trees here in abundance, but it
is a storm-tossed woodland, and much of the felled timber is so twisted
in grain as to be useless for ordinary purposes.
We saw many trees that had been struck by lightning, their branches
hurled in all directions. Up a steep hill after leaving this forest,
and stopping at an old-fashioned inn, we regaled ourselves on
ginger-ale. The landlord pointed with some pride to the sign that hung
over the door.
"The duke himself--the old duke, sir, his Grace of the leathern
breeches--brought that sign here himself--in his own hands and in his
own carriage, and it isn't many real gentlemen that would have done
that, sir!"
The memory of the old duke is as much reverenced here, it appears to me,
as that of Peter the Great is in Russia. The stories and anecdotes of
his life you hear in the neighbourhood would fill a volume. People all
admit he was eccentric, but his eccentricity filled many a hungry mouth,
soothed the sorrows of the aged, and made many and many a home happy.
The tunnel towards Warsop is about two miles long, lighted by gas at
night, and from windows above by day; there are a riding-school and
wonderful stables underground, ballroom, etc, etc. I am writing these
lines within a quarter of a mile of the open-air stables. The place
looks like a small city.
Just one--only one--anecdote of the old duke's eccentricity. It was
told me last night, and proves his Grace to have been a man of kindly
feeling. A certain architect had finished--on some part of the ground--
a large archway and pillared colonnade, at great expense to the duke, no
doubt. It did not please the latter, however, but he would not wound
the architect's feelings by telling him so. No, but one evening he got
together some two hundred men, and every stone was taken away and the
ground levelled before morning. The architect must have stared at the
transformation when he came next day, but the matter was never even
referred to by the duke, and of course the architect said nothing.
The country through which we went after passing the duke's irrigation
works was a rolling one, hill and dale, green fields, forest, loch, and
stream. There are wild creatures in it in abundance. Yonder are two
swans sailing peacefully along on a little lake; here, near the edge of
the stream, a water-hen with a brood of little black young ones. She
hurries them along through the hedge as our trap approaches, but the
more hurry the less speed, and more than one poor little mite tumbles on
its back, and has to be helped up by the mother. Yonder on the grass is
a brace of parent partridges; they do not fly away; their heads are
together; they are having a loving consultation on ways and means, and
the young brood is only a little way off. Before us now, and adown the
road, runs a great cock pheasant; he finally takes flight and floats
away towards the woods. Look in the stream, how the glad fish leap, and
the bubbles escaping from the mud in that deep dark pool tell where some
fat eel is feeding. We pause for a moment to admire the trees, and the
music of birds and melancholy croodling of the cushat fall upon our
ears, while young rabbits scurry about in all directions, and a cuckoo
with attendant linnet flies close over our horse's head.
Not far from the little inn where we stopped we saw the ruins of King
John's palace. But little is left of it now, the stones having been put
to other purposes, and it looks as like the ruins of an old barn as
those of a palace.
We leave the road and pass into the forest proper--the old Sherwood
Forest, sacred to the memory of Robin Hood and Little John and the merry
monks of the olden time.
We enter Birkland. Saving those wondrous and ancient oaks that stand
here and there, and look so weird and uncanny as almost to strike the
beholder with awe, the forest is all new. Long straight broad avenues
go in all directions through it. The ground on these is as level as a
lawn, and just as soft and green. Here is the Shamble Oak. Its
weirdlike arms are still green, though it is said to be 1,700 years old,
and may be more. The trunk, round which twelve good strides will hardly
take you, is sadly gutted by fire. Some boys set it alight in trying to
smoke out a hornet's hive. Here, in this oak, it is said, Robin Hood
hung his slaughtered deer, and, in more modern times, keepers and
poachers used it as a larder.
A quaint and pretty log-hut _a la Russe_ has recently been erected near
the Shamble Oak. It is not yet furnished, but we found our way inside,
the keeper in attendance here giving us great and impressive injunctions
to wipe our feet and not step off the canvas. I wonder he did not bid
us remove our shoes.
From the balcony of this log-hut one could have rabbit-shooting all day
long, and pigeon-shooting in the evening. I hope no one ever will
though.
We went home a different way, Mr Tebbet opening the double-padlocked
gates for us. We passed the Parliament Tree, as it is called, where
they tell us King John used to assemble his councillors. It is an oak
still, a skeleton oak hung together by chains.
From the brow of a hill which we soon reached, we enjoyed a panorama,
the like of which is not elsewhere to be seen in all broad England.
From Howitt's "Rural Life in England" I cull the following:
"Near Mansfield there remains a considerable wood, Harlowe Wood, and a
fine scattering of old oaks near Berry Hill, in the same neighbourhood,
but the greater part is now an open waste, stretching in a succession of
low hills and long winding valleys, dark with heather. A few solitary
and battered oaks standing here and there, the last melancholy remnants
of these vast and ancient woods, the beautiful springs, swift and
crystalline brooks, and broad sheets of water lying abroad amid the dark
heath, and haunted by numbers of wild ducks and the heron, still remain.
But at the Clipstone extremity of the forest, a remnant of its ancient
woodlands remains, unrifled, except of its deer--a specimen of what the
whole once was, and a specimen of consummate beauty and interest.
Birkland and Bilhaghe taken together form a tract of land extending from
Ollerton along the side of Thoresby Park, the seat of Earl Manvers, to
Clipstone Park, of about five miles in length, and one or two in width.
Bilhaghe is a forest of oaks, and is clothed with the most impressive
aspect of age that can perhaps be presented to the eye in these
kingdoms... A thousand years, ten thousand tempests, lightnings, winds,
and wintry violence have all flung their utmost force on these trees,
and there they stand, trunk after trunk, scathed, hollow, grey, and
gnarled, stretching out their bare sturdy arms on their mingled foliage
and ruin--a life in death. All is grey and old. The ground is grey
beneath--the trees are grey with clinging lichens--the very heather and
fern that spring beneath them have a character of the past.