It would be difficult nowadays to discover any one to agree with Pennant, the antiquary, who in 1782 could find it possible to write of the superbly wooded road across Dunsmore Heath as a “tedious avenue of elms and firs.” The adjective is altogether indefensible. Six miles of smooth and level highway, bordered here by noble pines, and there by equally noble elms, invite the traveller to linger by the roadside from Dunchurch to Ryton-on-Dunsmore. It is a stretch of country not only beautiful but interesting, alike for its history and traditions. The Heath, long since enclosed and under cultivation, but once the haunt of fabled monsters, and, at a later period, of desperate highwaymen, is a level tract of land dotted with villages that all add to their names the title of “upon-Dunsmore,” as a kind of terrific dignity. Through the midst of this sometime wilderness goes the high-road, beautiful always, but singularly lovely in the eyes of the traveller who, advancing in a north-westerly direction, sees the setting sun glaring redly between the wizard arms of the pines. Many of those exquisite trees are of great age. The avenue, in fact—the Ong Avenue, as it was originally called—was planted in 1740, by John, second Duke of Montague. Some of the firs have decayed, but happily their places will be taken in due course by the saplings planted of late years. The elms are, most of them, in worse case, and are being generally cut down to half their height by cautious road surveyors. The elm, that, without warning, rots at the heart and collapses in a moment, is the most treacherous of trees; and, some day, those that are left here will suddenly fall and be the death of the unhappy cyclist, farmer, or tramp who happens to be passing at the time. [Illustration: DUNSMORE AVENUE.] It was here, in 1686, that Jonathan Simpson robbed Lord Delamere of 350 guineas, and “innumerable drovers, pedlars, and market-people,” all the way to Barnet. Jonathan was executed the followed September, aged thirty-two. Two famous posting-houses once stood beside this lonely road: the “Blue Boar” and the “Black Dog.” Both have retired into private life. The old “Blue Boar,” still giving the name of “Blue Boar Corner” to the cross-roads, two miles out from Dunchurch, is a square building of white-painted brick, and stands on the left hand, with a garden where the coach-drive used to be. It must have been especially welcome to travellers in the dreadful snowstorm of December, 1836, when no fewer than seventeen coaches were snowed up on the Heath, near a spot named, appropriately enough, “Cold Comfort.”