I02 THE EXETER ROAD 



ill it, for here was the hest stretch of galloping 

 ground in England, and they ' sprang ' their horses 

 over it for all they 'were worth, through Hartley Row 

 and Hook, and well on towards Basingstoke. 



The famous (or infamous let us rather call them) 

 Hartford Bridge Flats are fully as dreary as any of 

 the desolate Californian mining flats of which Bret 

 Harte has written so eloquently. Salisbury Plain 

 itself, save that the Plain is more extensive, is no 

 worse place in which to be overtaken by bad weather. 

 Excessively bleak and barren, the Flats are well 

 named, for they stretch absolutely level for four 

 miles : a black, open, unsheltered heath, with nothing 

 but stunted gorse bushes for miles on either side, and 

 the distant horizon closed in by the solemn battalions 

 of sinister -looking pine -woods. The road runs, a 

 straight and sandy strip, through the midst of this 

 wilderness, unfenced, its monotony relieved only by 

 a group of ragged firs about half-way. The cyclist 

 who toils alono; these miles ag;ainst a head wind is 

 as unlikely to forget Hartford Bridge Flats as were 

 the unfortunate ' outsides ' on the coaches when rain 

 or storm made the passage miserable. 



Hartford Bridge, at the foot of the hill below this 

 nightmare country, is a pretty hamlet of yellow sand 

 and pine-woods, sand-martins and rabbits uncount- 

 able. The place is interesting and unspoiled, because 

 its development was suddenly arrested when the 

 Exeter Road became deserted for the railway in the 

 early '40's ; and so it remains, in essentials, a veri- 

 table old hamlet of the coaching days. Even more 

 eloquent of old times is the long, long street of 



