2 04 THE BATH ROAD 



reaching Batli by way of Devizes and Melksham. 

 Some coaches went one way and some the other. 

 The crack coaches, including the " Beaufort Hunt," 

 went by the former, which is two and a half miles 

 shorter, and is the classic route, and always the one 

 selected nowadays by record-breaking cyclists. 



XXXIV 



The road between Newbury and Bath was in 

 coaching days known as the "lower ground," So 

 far as physical geography goes, however, the land is 

 a great deal higher, and much more hilly than the 

 "upper ground " between London and Newbury, and 

 it is not to be wondered at that accidents would some- 

 times happen here. This, then, was the scene of an 

 accident to a coach driven by a gay young blade, 

 one " Jack Everett ; " an accident in which he and an 

 elderly lady passenger had a broken leg each. Both 

 sufferers were put into a cart filled with straw, and 

 taken to the nearest surgeon. On the road into 

 Marlborouo'h the coachman beg-uiled the tedium of 

 the way and the pain of his injured limb by saying 

 to the old lady, " I have often kissed a young woman, 

 and I don't see why I shouldn't kiss an old one " — 

 and he suited the action to the words. 



Beckhampton inn, whose real sign is tlic "Waggon 

 and Horses," is the place mentioned by Dickens in the 

 " Bagman's Story " in the Pickwick Papers. It 



