SOME WILTSHIRE MEMORIES 



equivalents, more or less all down the river, and the 

 local angler mourned. As an ex-local I enjoyed that 

 year, among others, the usual liberty upon the Kennet, 

 with the further privilege, always thoughtfully ac- 

 corded, of taking a friend. My professor of the Avon 

 jumped at the opportunity of joining me in the latter 

 capacity, as was very natural, and we had another 

 day together on the Mildenhall water. 



Now every traveller on the Bath road must know 

 the hill-top where, emerging from Savernake forest, 

 you first catch sight of Marlborough lying below, at 

 the foot of a mile-long steady slope, down which the 

 coach-drivers of former days used betimes to terrify 

 their fares by making up a lost five minutes. The 

 sight of the old town with its red roofs, its two 

 hoary church towers, and the beautiful spire of the 

 school chapel in the background, lying snugly in its 

 green trough with the waste of downland spreading 

 into space behind, is the best thing yet in all the 

 seventy-seven miles from London. For you sweep 

 just here out of the cramped country, out of the 

 stuffy home counties into the glorious downland that 

 rolls away towards the glorious west, the noble beeches 

 of Savernake making a fitting portal for such an 

 advent. Glistening brightly out of the old town as 

 you cross the rubicon and descend the hill comes the 

 Kennet, coiling through the water meadows and 

 slipping down from mill to mill by Polton, Mildenhall, 

 Stitchcombe, and Axford on its way to Ramsbury and 

 Littlecote. Here my new friend, the professor, had 

 a further opportunity of demonstrating this new art 

 to my discomfiture, and incidentally to my enlighten- 



83 



