_To-day_, _all that is changed_. _Every summer_, _every autumn_, _sees large numbers of touring automobiles on the way to Scotland and the moors_, _filled with those who prefer the road_, _on such terms_, _to the railway_. _From being something in the nature of a lonely highway_, _the Great North Road has thus become a very much travelled one_. _In this way_, _some of its circumstances have changed remarkably_, _and old-time comfortable wayside inns that seemed to have been ruined for all time with the coming of railways and the passing of the coaches have wakened to a newer life_. _Chief among these is the_ “_Bell_” _on Barnby Moor_, _just north of Retford_. _The story of its revival is a romance_. _Closed about_ 1845, _and converted into a farm-house_, _no one would have cared to predict its revival as an inn_. _But as such it was reopened_, _chiefly for the use of motorists_, _in_ 1906, _and there it is to-day_. _But_, _apart from the tarred and asphalted condition of the actual roadway in these times_, _the route_, _all the way between London_, _York and Edinburgh_, _looks much the same as it did_. _Only_, _where perhaps one person might then know it thoroughly_, _from end to end_, _a hundred are well acquainted with the way and its features_. _It is for those many who now know the Great North Road that this new edition is prepared_, _giving the story of the long highway between the two capitals_. CHARLES G. HARPER. _April_, 1922. THE GREAT NORTH ROAD LONDON TO YORK