The “White Horse” at Woolstone, a queerly pretty little inn with a front distantly resembling a Chippendale bureau-bookcase, is an instance. No story belongs to the “White Horse,” which is tucked away under the mighty sides of White Horse Hill, Berkshire, and additionally overhung with trees and encircled with shrubberies and underwoods, and is finally situated on a narrow road that presently leads, as it would seem, to the end of the known world. The stranger stumbles by accident upon the “White Horse” inn while looking for a way uphill to that ancient Saxon effigy of a horse scored in the turf and chalk on the summit; and there, before he tackles that ascent, he does, if he be a wise man, fortify himself against the fatigue of much hard Excelsior business by that best of tourist’s fare--ale and bread and cheese--in the little stone-flagged parlour. Among memories of old rural inns, those of the “White Horse” are not the least endearing; but the “Anchor” at Ripley has a warm corner in the hearts of many old-time frequenters of the “Ripley Road,” who, when the world was young and the bicycle high, made it their house of call every week in the summer season, and wavered little in their allegiance to the “Ripley Road” even in autumn and winter. Ripley, in the days of the high bicycle and in the first years of the “safety,” was well styled the “Cyclists’ Mecca,” for it was then the most popular place in the wheelman’s world. On Saturdays and Sundays it was no uncommon thing to see two or three hundred machines stacked in front of the “Anchor.” [Illustration: THE “TALBOT,” RIPLEY. _Photo by R. W. Thomas._] There were several reasons for this popularity: the easy distance of twenty-three miles from London; the fine character of the road; and certainly not least, the welcome extended to cyclists at the “Anchor” by the Dibble sisters and brother in early days when all the world regarded the cyclist as a pariah, and when to knock him over with a brick, or by the simple expedient of inserting a stick between the spokes of his wheel, was a popular form of humour. The two inns of Ripley--the great red-bricked “Talbot” and the rustic, white-faced “Anchor”--are typical, in their individual ways, of old road life that called them into existence centuries before ever the cycle came into being. The “Talbot,” you see at a glance, was the coaching-and posting-house; the “Anchor” was the house where the waggoners pulled up and the packmen stayed and the humbler wayfarers found a welcome. When railways came, both alike fell into the cold shade of neglect, but came into their own once more during those years of cycling popularity already mentioned. Now that Ripley has ceased to be the popular place it was, another reverse of fortune has overtaken them in common.