One drawback, and one only, is there to East Anglia as a topic for a motoring guide-book, and that affects only the maker of the book, not the motoring potentialities, so to speak, of the country. Taken as a whole it is not at all a flat district, and it has enough ups and downs and variety of scenery to suit any taste, but it is practically barren of hills presenting any real difficulty to a car of moderate power. So, in this volume, it is not necessary or possible to indicate any very serious gradients to be encountered on this journey or on that. It remains only, after a word of thanks to the friends who have lent their company and their cars, to add that every chapter is a faithful narrative of tours undertaken or of journeys made, together with an account of the associations and memories appropriate to the places visited, and that, to save breaking the flow of the text, an analysis showing the route taken in each chapter, the distances from place to place, the points at which repairs may be effected, and the general character of the roads, appears at the very beginning of the volume. It must be understood, however, that these roads are judged by an East Anglian standard, for, even in Norfolk, where the road surface is far better as a rule than in any other East Anglian county, the roads cannot honestly be said to be of the highest order of merit. In the case of all hotels the presence of garage accommodation may be assumed, and all have been tried. THROUGH EAST ANGLIA IN A MOTOR-CAR CHAPTER I WINTER. [OXFORD] TO CAMBRIDGE, NEWMARKET, AND IPSWICH Elections delay start--Rail to Oxford--A treasure gained--Rail to Cambridge--Bull Hotel--English hotels criticized--Motorists squeezed--Morning at Cambridge--King's Chapel--Trinity Library--The Panhard arrives--Battered at elections--A start--Load and equipment--Undergraduates as pilots--A street blocked--Dull road to Newmarket--Bottisham Church excepted--Delusions about Swaffham Prior and Bulbeck--The Devil's Dyke--Prosperous Newmarket--The Icenhilde Way--A delusion in East Anglia--Kentford to Bury St. Edmunds--A switchback run--Fine trees--Arthur Young quoted--Bury St. Edmunds--Leland, Dickens, Arthur Young--Legends of St. Edmund--Past greatness of Bury--Parliaments held at--The Abbey ruins--Study with Shakespeare--Pickwick at the "Angel"--At the boarding school--Bury viâ Bayton, Woolpit, and Stowmarket to Ipswich--Night travelling--A legend of Woolpit--Dull Stowmarket--Ipswich at last--Narrow streets and fast tramcars--The "Great White Horse"--Why did Dickens speak so ill of it?--_Quære_ why the White Horse is an East Anglian sign--The "Crown and Anchor"--Ipswich oysters and gloves.