PART III TWO CIRCULAR TOURS OUT OF LONDON I WEST FROM LONDON TO THE WYE IN our three final chapters of this book I am outlining two circular trips out of London, one of which, at least, I hope you may take in addition to two of the four trips between London and Liverpool or Channel ports, to which we devoted our first chapters. There is (I'm sure you grant my understanding of this) no end to the divergences, amplifications, and other alterations which may, and doubtless should, be made as you adapt these outlines of mine to your individual taste and needs. I make them merely as suggestions for you to follow in so far as they accord with your time and purpose, and to change as seems best to you. Again, as in the early chapters, I base them on the presumption that you are motoring; and indicate what parts of the itinerary may be not too fatiguingly accomplished by train and char-à-banc excursion. There are a number of motor-bus circular tours now operating out of London, covering these and other sections of the country, at prices ranging at about two guineas (ten dollars) a day, and even less, for all expenses — transportation, hotels, etc. And while there are some travellers who will shudder at the merest thought of going in so much company and on a schedule which can make no allowance for personal preferences, there are others who find this mode of motoring quite satisfactory and enjoyable. If we go on a public tour, we must, of course, accept it as scheduled; and not only are détours of our choice impossible, but it may even be that unavoidable delays will necessitate the omission of places that were to have been included. But there are mischances in all sorts of travel (and other undertakings!), and it doesn't matter how we travel, we must always leave so many things unseen that the only way to be happy in journeying (as in life) is to keep counting our mercies and stop counting all we've missed. Now, if you have a yearning toward the west country, and a steering-wheel either to operate or to direct, you may cover many points of greatest interest and beauty in from four to seven days of continuous going; or you may loaf along over the same ground for an idyllic fortnight or more; but in fewer than four days you can do little justice to this section. Your first day's run may be out by way of Slough, Stoke Poges, Windsor, Eton, Burnham Beeches, Beaconsfield, to Oxford. Or, if you have visited those points (except Oxford), you may go by Uxbridge, Beaconsfield, High Wycombe, to Oxford. The latter is the direct motor route from London to Oxford. It is fifty-four miles, and very easily covered, even with a stop or two, in a leisurely morning's run. So that, if you have not seen Oxford by special journey out from London, or en route from Liverpool by way of Worcester, you could lunch there on the first day of your westward trip; spend the afternoon and night there (see our Chapter IV) and go on in the morning. If, however, you include Slough and Windsor, you could scarcely get to Oxford in time to see much of it before dinner. And, on the other hand, if you BEACONSFIELD AND HIGH WYCOMBE 415 stopped at Oxford en route from Liverpool, you may easily reach Gloucester or Tewkesbury on the afternoon of your first day out from London. I'd say Tewkesbury; for, though it is but eleven miles north of Gloucester, you would need the better part of a half-day to go up there from Gloucester, see it, and return. And Gloucester you will not miss by deferring it, because it is on your way from the Wye Valley to Bristol. Should you loiter near Beaconsfield, to visit Edmund Burke's grave, or William Penn's (at Jordan's), or Milton's cottage (at Chalfont Saint Giles), you may not get farther than High Wycombe for luncheon at the Red Lion, a famous old halfway house between London and Oxford. A century ago, the stage-coach that started from the Belle Sauvage, Holborn, ran to the Red Lion in four hours, and returned the same day. From the porch above the entrance, Benjamin Disraeli appealed for election to Parliament, in 1832 and didn't get it. At Amersham, five miles north of Beaconsfield, is the Crown, a typical old coaching inn of the early seventeenth century, masked behind nineteenth-century ugliness. more Presuming, however, that you have left Oxford behind, and Burford, and that you do not care to motor much more than a hundred miles in a single day (although much more than double can be done in a day without fatigue, given an early start, a good driver, a reasonably heavy car, and a long summer day's late twilight to finish in), let me suggest that you spend the night at Cheltenham if you like a very pleasant spa and a wide range of choice in hotels; or that you go on, eight miles, to Tewkesbury if you like 'Old England.' Dickens-lovers will spend the night at the Hop Pole, Tewkesbury, where Mr. Pickwick once dined with Bob Sawyer, Ben Allen, and Mr. Weller, 'upon which occasion |