The Automobilist Abroad

Chapter III

Land's End To John O'Groats

We had already done a bit of conventional touring in England, and we thought we knew quite all of the charms and fascinations of the idyllic countryside of most of Britain, not omitting even Ireland.

The cathedral towns had appealed to us in our youthful days, and we had rediscovered a good portion of Dickens's England on another occasion, had lived for a fortnight on a house-boat on the Thames, and had cruised for ten days on the Norfolk Broads, and besides had played golf in Scotland, and attempted to shoot grouse on a Scottish moor. All this had furnished at least variety, and, when it came to automobiling through Britain, it was merely going over well-worn ground that we had known in our cycling days, and usually we went merely where fancy willed.

Conditions had changed considerably, in fact all things had changed, we ourselves no less than certain aspects of the country which we had pictured as always being (in England) of that idyllic tenor of which the poet sings. This comes of living too much in London, and with too frequent week-ends at Brighton, Bournemouth, or Cromer.

For years, ever since we had first set foot in England in the days when cycling en tandem (and even touring in the same manner) was in vogue, if not the fashion, we had heard of John O'Groat's house, and we had seen Land's End many a time coming up Channel. We knew, too, that among scorching cyclists "Land's End to John O'Groat's" was a classic itinerary for those who would boast of their prowess and their grit.

All this passed and then came the automobile. "Land's End to John O'Groat's" is nothing for an automobile, though it is the longest straightaway bit of road in all Britain, 888 miles, to be exact. If you are out for a record on an automobile you do it as a "non-stop" run. It's dull, foolhardy business that, and it proves nothing except your ability to keep awake for anything between thirty-six and forty-eight hours, which you can do just as well sitting up with a sick friend.

In spite of the banal sound that the very words had for us, "Land's End to John O'Groat's" had a perennial fascination, and so we set out with our automobile to cover this much, talked of itinerary, with all its varied charms and deficiencies, for, taking it all in all, it is probably one of the hilliest roads in Britain, rising as it does over eight distinct ranges of what are locally called mountains, and mountains they virtually are when it comes to crossing them by road.

There is nothing very exciting to be had from a tour such as this, though it is nearly a nine hundred mile straight-away promenade. For the most part one's road lies through populous centres, far more so than any American itinerary for a reliability trial for automobiles that was ever conceived. Many are the "events" which have been run over this "Land's End – John O'Groat's" course, and the journey has proved the worth or worthlessness of many a new idea in automobilism.

The modern automobile is getting complicated, but it is also becoming efficient, if not exactly approaching perfection as yet. The early days of automobiling were not fraught with so many technicalities as to-day, when the last new thing may be a benzine bus or a turbine trailer; formerly everything was simple and crude, – and more or less inefficient. To-day many cars are as complicated as a chronometer and require the education of an expert who has lived among their intricacies for many months in order to control their vagaries and doctor their ills, which, if not chronic, are as varied as those of an old maid of sixty.

Four of us started on our road to the north as fit as possible, and we were courageous enough to think our automobile was likewise, as it was a tried and trusty friend with some twenty thousand miles to its credit, and with never a breakage so far as its mechanism was concerned.

We had stayed a few days at Penzance and got to knew something of Cornwall and things Cornish. Unquestionably Cornwall is the least spoiled section of Southern Britain; its coastline is rocky and serrated, and its tors and hills and rills are about as wild and unspoiled by the hand of man as can be imagined. There is a vast literature on the subject if one cares to read it, and the modern fictionists (like the painter-men) have even developed a "Cornish school." However, there need be no discussion of its merits or demerits here.

In Mount's Bay is the Cornish counterpart of Normandy's St. Michel's Mount. It is by no means so great or imposing, or endowed with such a wealth of architectural charm as the cross-channel Mont St. Michel, but the English St. Michael's Mount, a granite rock rising from the sea two hundred and fifty or more feet, was sufficient of an attraction to draw us to Penzance for our headquarters and to keep us till we had visited its castle of the days of Charles II. There is no question of the age of St. Michael's Mount, for Ptolemy charted it in Roman days, and the Roman warriors, who battled with the Britons, made spear-heads and hatchets of the tin and iron which they dug from its rocky defences.

The grim, unlovely little hotel at Land's End sheltered us the night before the commencement of our journey north, and the Longships Lighthouse flashed its warning in through our open bedroom window all the night long and made us dream of wicked and unworldly monster automobiles bearing down upon us with a great blazing phare which blotted out all else.

The nightmare passed, we got ourselves together at five in the morning, drank tepid tea, and ate the inevitable bacon and eggs furnished one for breakfast in England, and, before lunch, had passed Bodmin, crossed Bodmin moor (a little Exmoor), and skirted Dartmoor, just north of Great Links Tor, arriving at Exeter at high noon.

Pople's New London Hotel at Exeter is the headquarters of the Automobile Club, is patronized by Royalty (so the advertisements say), and is a very satisfactory-looking old-century inn which has not wholly succumbed to modern improvement, nor yet is it wholly backward. It is "fair to middling" only, so far as the requirements of the automobilist go (what Royalty may think of it the writer does not know), but its proprietor ought to take a trip abroad and find out what his house lacks.

The wonder of Exeter for us was the carved west porch of its cathedral, not very good carving, we were told, but undeniably effective, peopled as it was with a whole regiment of sculptured effigies.

Exeter has a ruined castle, too, called Rougement, a name which preserves the identity of its Norman origin. Exeter's High Street is a curious stagy affair, with great jutting house gables, pillars, and pignons, undeniably effective, but a terror to automobilists because of its narrowness and the congestion of its traffic.

The road turns north after leaving Exeter and passes Taunton, "one of the nicest towns in the west of England," as we were told by the landlord's daughter on leaving Exeter. Not knowing what her standard was for judgment, but suspecting it was tea and buns, we delved away into the county of Somerset and reached Wells, on the edge of the Mendip Hills, before dinner.

Somerset is reputed to be one of the loveliest counties in the west of England and one of the most countrified of all Britain. It is a region of farming lands, of big and little estates, with the big ones predominating, which the land reformers, and all others who give it a thought, claim must some day be divided among the people. When that millennium comes Somerset will be a paradise for the people. In spite of its productiveness and its suitability for farming, the great estates of the wealthy are used for the purposes of pleasure and not of profit, for the hunting of foxes and for the shooting of pheasants.

Wells is an episcopal city with a bishop who presides also over Bath. Wells is essentially ecclesiastical; never had it a momentous or warlike history; it is bare of romance; it has no manufactures and no great families. Wells Cathedral takes high rank for the originality of its architecture, its general constructive excellence, and its sculptures.

There are three picturesquely named hotels, the Swan, the Mitre, and the Star. They are all equally dull, respectable, and conservative, and they stick to tradition and conventional English fare. You will probably arrive on boiled-mutton night; we did, and suspect that it recurs about three times a week, but it was good mutton, though it would have been a great deal better roasted, instead of boiled.

Via Cheddar, where the cheeses come from, we made our way to Bristol. Bristol is one of the most progressive automobile towns in England. You may see all sorts and conditions of automobiles at Bristol, even American automobiles, which are more or less of a rarity in Europe, even in England.

From Bristol to Gloucester, another cathedral town, we passed over good roads and pleasant ones, rounding meanwhile the Cotswolds and passing direct to Worcester, where we lunched.

It is useless to attempt to describe a complete trip in pages such as these, and, beyond commenting on changing conditions and novel scenes, it is not attempted. Generally speaking the road surfaces were excellent throughout, but the grades of the hills were ofttimes abnormal, and the narrowness of main roads, and the hedge-hidden byroads which crossed them, made travelling more or less of a danger for the stranger, particularly if he was not habituated to England's custom of "meeting on the left and passing on the right."

Following the valley of the Severn, by Shrewsbury and Whitechurch, we crossed the great Holyhead Road, "the king's highway," from London to Holyhead.

From Ogilby's Road Book, an old book-stall find of one of our party at Shrewsbury, we learned that in days gone by the coach "Wonder" left the Bull and Mouth, at St. Martin's-le-Grand in London, at 6.30 A. M., and was at Shrewsbury at 10.30 the same night. Good going indeed for those days!

At Shrewsbury one is within easy reach of the Welsh border, but, in spite of the novelty promised us, we kept on our way north. This was not because we feared the "evil character" of the Welsh (as an old writer put it), but because we feared their language.

We left Liverpool and its docks, and Manchester and its cotton factories, to the left, and, passing through Warrington and Preston, arrived at Lancaster for the night. It was the longest day's driving we had done in England, something over two hundred miles. All the ordinary characteristics of the southern counties had been left far behind. The prettiness of conventional English scenery had made way for something more of character and severity of outline. For the morrow we had to look forward to the climb over Shap Fell, one of England's genuine mountain roads, or as near like one as the country has.

Lancaster was perhaps not the best place we could have chosen for the night, but everything had been running well and we had pushed on simply for the joy of the running. The County Hotel at Lancaster was like other county hotels in England. Verb. sap. They had the audacity to charge two shillings for housing our automobile for the night, and pointed out the fact that this was the special rate given members of the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland.

Well! It was the most awful "roast" we found in England! They must have some grudge against the Club! "B. B. B." cost seven shillings and sixpence, and dinner four shillings more, a bottle of Bordeaux five shillings, etc. Four of us for the night (including a hot bath for each – which cost the hotel practically nothing) paid something like £3 for our accommodation. It wasn't worth it!

We passed the "Lake District" to the left the next morning, where it always rains, we are told. Perhaps it always does rain in some parts of Westmoreland, but it was bright and sunny when we crossed Shap Fell, at a height of something like twelve hundred feet above sea-level. The railway station of Shap Summit is itself at an elevation of a thousand feet. We had crossed nothing like this previously in England, although it is not so very high after all, nor is it so very terrifying in the ascent or descent. The Castle of Comfort Inn in the Mendip Hills was only seven hundred feet, but here we were five hundred feet above it, and the neighbouring Fells, Helvellyn and Scafell in particular, raised their regular, rounded peaks to something over thirty-two hundred feet in the air.

Carlisle is commonly called the border town between England and Scotland; at any rate it was a vantage-ground in days gone by that was of a great value to one faction and a thorn in the side to the other. The conquering and unconquered Scots are the back-bone of Britain, there's no denying that; and Carlisle is near enough to the border to be intimately acquainted with their virtues.

We inspected Carlisle's cathedral, its ugly castle, and the County Hotel, – and preferred the two former. One thing in Carlisle struck us as more remarkable than all else, and that was that the mean annual temperature was stated to be 48° F. It was just that, when we were there, though cloudy and unpromising as to weather. In our opinion Carlisle is an unlovely, disagreeable place.

Gretna Green, with its famous, or infamous, career as a marriage mart, had little to offer a passing tourist beyond some silly, vulgar postcards on sale at a newsdealer's.

Across the border topographical characteristics did not greatly change, at least not at once, from what had gone immediately before, and it was not until Lockerbie was reached that we fully realized that we were in Scotland.

It was a long, long pull, and a hard, hard pull of seventy miles from Lockerbie to Edinburgh, via Moffat, Biggar, and Penicuik, skirting the Fells of Peebleshire and running close beneath the Pentland Hills, with memories of Stevenson's tales ever uppermost in our minds.

Via Dalkeith the entrance into Edinburgh is delightful, but via Rosslyn it is unbeautiful enough until one actually drops down into world-famed Princes' Street.

Romantic Edinburgh is known by European travellers as one of the sights never omitted from a comprehensive itinerary. It is quaint, picturesque, grand, squalid, and luxurious all rolled into one. Its castle crowns the height above the town on one side, and Arthur's Seat does the same on the other, with gloomy old Holyrood in the gulf between, the whole softened and punctuated with many evidences of modern life, the smoke and noise of railways, trams, and factories. There are many guide-books to Edinburgh, but there are none so satisfactory as Stevenson's tales dealing with the town. In "Kidnapped," "The Master of Ballantrae," and "Catriona," he pictures its old streets and "stairs," its historic spots, its very stones and flags, and the charming countryside around in incomparable fashion.

The Carlton Hotel at Edinburgh is the automobile hotel of Britain. There is nothing quite so good either in England or Scotland. The proof of this is that the Automobile Club de France have given it distinctive marks in its "Annuaire de l'Etranger." There is the tiny silhouette of a knife and fork, and four-poster bed, indicating that the tables and beds are of an agreeable excellence. This is a great deal more satisfying as a recommendation than Baedeker's.

We crossed the Firth of Forth via the Granton Ferry, from Granton to Burntisland, – pronounced Burnt Island – a fact that none of us knew previously.

Via Kinross and Loch Leven we arrived at Perth for lunch. We went to the Salutation Hotel, because of its celebrated "Prince Charlie Room," and had no reason to regret the lunch that was given us, or the price paid for it. Scottish hotels have had a reputation of not being as good as those of England and much more costly. We were finding things just the reverse. Automobilism is an industry in Scotland, not a fad, and the automobilist is catered for accordingly, at least so it seemed to us, and, since the leading British automobile is a Scotch production, who can deny that the Scot has grasped the salient points of the whole scheme of affairs in a far better manner than the Sassenach.

From Perth, through the very heart of the Scotch Highlands, we passed through Glen Garry and the Valley of the Spey. Cairn Gorm rose something over four thousand feet immediately on our right, when, turning abruptly northwest, we came into Inverness just at nightfall. It had been another long, hard day, and, since Perth, over indifferent roads.

The capital of the Highlands, Inverness, treated us very well at the Alexandra Hotel. As a summer or autumn resort Inverness has scarcely its equal in Britain. It is a lively, interesting, and picturesque town, and day lingers far on into the night by reason of its northern situation. Its temperature, moreover, for the most part of the year, is by no means as low as in many parts farther south.

From Inverness, via Dingwall, Tain, and Bonar Bridge, the roads improved, lying almost at sea-level. Here was a long sweep westward and then eastward again, around the Moray Firth, and it was not until we stopped at Helmsdale for lunch, 102 miles from Inverness, that we left the coastline road, and then only for a short distance.

Again at Berriedal we came to the coast, the surging, battering North Sea waves carving grimly every foot of the shore line. Lybster, Albster, and Thrumster were not even names that we had heard of previously, and we dashed through them at the legal limit, with only a glance of the eye at their quaintness and unworldliness.

Caithness is the most northern county of Scotland, and its metropolis is Wick, where one gets the nearest approach to the midnight sun that can be found with civilized, modern, and up-to-date surroundings.

The Scottish Automobile Club vouched for the accommodation of the Station Hotel, at Wick, and we had no occasion to question their judgment. (B. B. B., six shillings; which is cheap – though it costs you two shillings to stable your machine at a neighbouring garage.)

From Wick to John O'Groat's is thirty-six miles, out and back. We were all day doing it, loafing along over a heather-strewn plain and lunching at the Hotel Huna (the significance of which name we forgot to ask.)

This ended our run to the North, five days in all, not a very terrific speed or a very venturesome proceeding, but as good a test of one's knowledge of how to keep his machine running as can be got anywhere. It was a sort of rapid review of many things of which we had hitherto only a scrappy, fragmentary knowledge, and is a trip which should not be omitted from any one's grand European itinerary if one has the time and means of covering it.

Part IV

In Belgium, Holland, And Germany

Chapter I

On The Road In Flanders

There has been a noticeable falling off in touring in Belgium. There is no reason for this except the caprice of fashion, and the automobile and its popularizing influence will soon change all this, in spite of the abominable stretches of paved highroads, which here and there and everywhere, and most unexpectedly, crop up and shake one almost to pieces, besides working dire disaster to the mechanical parts of one's automobile. The authorities are improving things, but it will be some time yet before Belgium is as free from pavé as is France.

The good roads of Belgium are as good as those anywhere to be found, and it is only the unlooked for and distressingly frequent stretches of paved highway which need give any concern.

The natives speak French – of a sort – here and there in Belgium, but they also speak Flemish and Walloon.

We left Paris by the Route de Belgique, crossed the frontier at Givet, and made our first stop at Rethel, 193 kilometres away, where we passed the night, at the Hôtel de France. For a town of less than six thousand people Bethel is quite a metropolis. It has a grand establishment known as the Société d'Automobiles Bauchet, which will cater for any and every want of the automobilist, and has a half-dozen sights of first rank, from the old Hôtel Dieu to the bizarre doubled-up Eglise St. Nicolas and the seventeenth-century, wood-roofed market-house.

Sorbon, four kilometres away, is the birthplace of Robert Sorbon, the founder of the Sorbonne at Paris, and is a classic excursion which is never omitted by true pilgrims who come to Rethel.

Fifty-three kilometres from Rethel is Rocroi, a name which means little to most strangers in France. It is near the Belgian frontier and saw bloody doings in the Franco-Prussian war.

Rocroi is a pompous little fortified place reached only by one road and a narrow-gauge railway – literally two streaks of iron rust – which penetrate up to the very doors of a pretentious Hôtel de Ville with a Doric façade, and not much else that is remarkable.

The town has a population of but two thousand, is surrounded by fortifications, contains a Caserne, a Sous-Préfecture, a Prison, and a Palais de Justice. All this officialdom weights things down considerably, and, what with the prospect of the custom-house arrangements at Givet, and the necessity of demonstrating to an over-zealous gendarme at Rocroi that we really had a "Certificat de Capacité," and that the photograph which it bore (which didn't look the least like us) was really ours, we were considerably angered and delayed on our departure the next morning, particularly as we had already been three days en route and the frontier was still thirty odd kilometres away.

As one passes Rocroi, Belgium and France blend themselves into an indistinguishable unit so far as characteristics go. Manners and customs here change but slowly, and the highroad must be followed many kilometres backward toward Paris before one gets out of the influence of Flemish characteristics.

We finally got across the Belgium frontier at Givet, at least we got our passavant here, though the Belgian customs formalities took place at Heer-Agimont, formalities which are delightfully simple, though evolving the payment of a fee of twelve per cent. of the declared value of your automobile. You get your receipt for money paid, which you present at the frontier station by which you leave and get it back again – if you have not lost your papers. If you have you might as well prepare to live in Belgium the rest of your life, as a friend of ours told us he had done, when we met him unexpectedly on a café terrace at Ostende a week later.

There be those who are content to grovel in dark alleys, among a sordid picturesqueness, surrounded by a throng of garlic-sodden natives, rather than while their time away on the open mountainside or wide-spread lake or plain. All such are advised to keep away from Southern Belgium, the Ardennes, and the valley of the Meuse at Dinant and Namur.

We lunched at the Hôtel des Postes at Dinant on the Meuse, and so lovely was the town and its environs, and the twenty-eight kilometres of valley road to Namur (no pavé here), that it took us eight hours of a long summer's day to get away from Dinant and get settled down again for the night in the Hôtel d'Harscamp at Namur.

The native declares there is nothing to equal the view from the fortress-height of the citadel of Namur, neither in Switzerland nor the Pyrenees; but though we climbed the three twisting kilometres to the fort, there was nothing more than a ravishing view of the charming river valley at our feet. The majesty of it all was in the imagination of the inhabitant, but all the same it was of a loveliness that few artists can describe in paint, few authors picture in words, and no kodakist reproduce satisfactorily in print. There is but one thing for the curious to do, and that is to go and see it for himself.

The rest of the journey across Belgium to Brussels the writer would like to forget. Oh, that terrible next day! Sixty kilometres of one of the worst and most destructive roads, for an automobile, in Europe, and through a most uninteresting country. Perhaps, if the road had been better, the landscape might not have had so oppressive an effect. As it was, an automobilist journeys along the road – which is practically across the kingdom – his eyes glued to it, his heart in his mouth, and he bumps and slides over the wearying kilometres until he all but forgets the beauties of the Meuse now so far behind. Kilometre after kilometre of this vile road is paved with blocks of stone as big as one's head, half of which are out of place. And when one's automobile sinks into the holes one can but shudder. One hears of a road that is paved with good intentions. It does not enjoy a good reputation, but it can't be worse than the road from Namur to Brussels!