In 1763, owing partly to the improvements that had taken place along the road, and more perhaps to the growing system of providing more changes of horses and shorter stages, the "London and Cambridge Diligence" is found making the journey daily, in eight hours, by way of Royston, "performed by J. Roberts of the White Horse, Fetter Lane; Thomas Watson's, the Red Lyon, Royston; and Jacob Brittain, the Sun, Cambridge." The "Diligence" ran light, carrying three passengers only, at a fare of thirteen shillings and sixpence. There were in this same year two other coaches; the "Fly," daily, from the Queen's Head, Gray's Inn Lane, by way of Epping and Chesterford, to the Rose on the Market Hill, Cambridge, at a fare of twelve shillings; and the "Stage," daily, to the Red Lion, Petty Cury, carrying four passengers at ten shillings each. We hear little at this period of coaches or waggons on to Ely and King's Lynn. Cambridgeshire and Norfolk roads were only just being made good, after many centuries of neglect, and Cambridge town was still, as it always had been (strange though it may now seem), something of a port. The best and safest way was to take boat or barge by Cam and Ouse, rather than face the terrors of roads almost constantly flooded. Gillam's, Burleigh's, and Salmon's waggons, which at this time were advertised to ply between London and Cambridge, transferred their loads on to barges at the quays by Great Bridge. Indeed it was not until railways came that Cambridge ceased to depend largely upon the rivers, and the coals burnt, the wine drank, and the timber used were water-borne to the very last. Hence we find the town always in the old days peculiarly distressed in severe winters when the waterways were frozen; and hence, too, the remonstrance made by the Mayor and Corporation when Denver Sluice was rebuilt in 1745, "to the hindering of the navigation to King's Lynn."