British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car: Being a Record of a Five Thousand Mile Tour in England, Wales and ScotlandMurphy, Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler)
History
British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car: Being a Record of a Five Thousand Mile Tour in England, Wales and Scotland
Murphy, Thos. D. (Thomas Dowler)
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Maps
From Huntingdon we returned to Cambridge, having completed a circular
tour of about sixty miles. We still had plenty of time to drive about
Cambridge and to view from the outside the colleges and other places of
interest. The streets are laid out in an irregular manner, and although
it is not a large city--only forty thousand--we had considerable
difficulty in finding our way back to the hotel. The University Arms is
situated on the edge of a large common called "The Field." Here in the
evening were several open-air religious services. One of these was
conducted by the Wesleyans, or Methodists, with a large crowd at the
beginning, but a Salvation Army, with several band instruments, soon
attracted the greater portion of the crowd. We found these open-air
services held in many towns through England and Scotland. They were
always conducted by "dissenting churches"--the Church of England would
consider such a proceeding as too undignified.
We wished to get an early start from Cambridge next morning, hoping to
reach London that night, and accordingly made arrangements with the head
waiter for an early breakfast. We told him we should probably want it at
7:30, and he looked at us in an incredulous manner. I repeated the
hour, thinking he did not understand, but he said he thought at first
we were surely joking. However, he would endeavor to accommodate us. If
we would leave our order that evening he thought he could arrange it at
the time desired, but we could easily see that it was going to upset the
traditions of the staid hotel, for the breakfast hour is never earlier
than nine o'clock. However, we had breakfast at 7:30 and found one other
guest in the room--undoubtedly an American. He requested a newspaper and
was informed that the morning papers were not received at the hotel
until half past ten o'clock, although Cambridge is just fifty miles from
London, or about an hour by train. The curiosity which the average
American manifests to know what happened on the day previous is almost
wanting in the staid and less excitable Britisher.
We were away from Cambridge by nine o'clock and soon found ourselves in
a country quite different in appearance from any we had yet passed
through. Our route led through Essex to Colchester on the coast. We
passed through several ancient towns, the first of them being Haverhill,
which contributed a goodly number of the Pilgrim Fathers and gave its
name to the town of Haverhill in Massachusetts. It is an old, straggling
place that seems to be little in harmony with the progress of the
Twentieth Century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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