;i8 



COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



figure who observed, " Ay, marry, will it." Such facts in 

 romances are every-day experiences, without the aid of 

 which their surprising worlds would not go round. 

 Besides, such matters have nothing to do really with the 

 ride to York. Time also presses — as the novelist almost 

 immediately afterwards remarks — and we may not linger 

 on our course. 



With a view of obviating which undesirable contingency 

 the prophet Ainsworth proceeds to pass full forty miles 

 in a breath of the Great North Road, and having left 

 Dick admiring highwaymen hung in chains on Gunnerby 

 Hill, just out of Grantham, proceeds to pick him up 



m* •••■ ,«« m ,'«JMi|iWr"i ITfp 



,lr<jri i r ,i« iin\ ' 



32 . V 



The Crown, Bawtry . 



again as he rides through Bawtry, which is 153 miles 

 from London, as measured from Hicks's Hall, and is 

 also where the Great North Road enters Yorkshire. 

 But it may be well to mention that before Turpin got to 

 Bawtry he went through Newark, 124 \ miles from 

 London, and 2 h miles over the Nottinghamshire border 

 — past Scarthing Moor inn (a posting-station in old days 

 but where is it now ?), through Tuxford, where the Red 

 Lion was a famous inn in the coaching days — now as 

 the Newcastle Arms, and posting-house not unknown to 

 fame — and so on past East Retford and Barnby Moor 



