SNOW 53 



and thickly covered with the foliage of creepers, it 

 is the beau-ideal of a first-class posting-inn in the 

 best of the coaching days. Large training stables are 

 attached to it, and young- race-horses occupy loose- 

 boxes where formerly pairs of post-horses found a 

 home. This was once Beckhampton Inn. 



In ' Forty Years at the Post-Office ' I have re- 

 counted the adventures of mail-guard Nobbs, in 

 carrying the mails to Aberystwith, in the late thirties. 

 I will now add that, properly to appreciate the 

 difficulties of that journey, it is needful to bear in 

 mind that the distance from Cheltenham to Aberyst- 

 with is 116 J miles ; that the young man rode in a 

 mountainous region (Radnor Forest is 2,163 feet, 

 and the top of Plinlimmon 2,463 feet, above sea-level), 

 in the depth of a severe winter ; and that the con- 

 cluding part of the journey had to be traversed, 

 partly by post-chaise, partly by cars, and partly on 

 foot. 



The winter of 1836-7 must have recalled, to any- 

 one then alive to remember it, the great snowstorm 

 of January, 1776, when, according to Gilbert A^^lite, 

 the company at Bath, who wanted to attend the 

 Queen's Birthday Drawing-room, were strangely in- 

 commoded. Many carriages which had struggled as 

 far as Marlborough were there stopped altogether. 

 * The ladies fretted, and offered large rewards to 

 labourers if they would shovel them a track to London. 

 But the relentless heaps of snow were too bulky to be 

 removed.' 



