Through East Anglia in a Motor CarVincent, James Edmund
General
Through East Anglia in a Motor Car
Vincent, James Edmund
Norfolk (England) -- Description and travel; Suffolk (England) -- Description and travel
Now there is an end of the dead level whereof the most eager of motorists
is apt to grow weary, if only because it gives his good car nothing to do.
At Bottisham, among the Fens, in fact, but not in their heart, the road is
but forty-six feet above the sea-level at King's Lynn, but in the course of
two miles to Street Way (surely Roman by its name) the road rises rapidly
and the Panhard climbs cheerfully to a height of 170 feet, an upland having
regard to its surroundings on the western side. The very air, eagerly as it
bites the cheeks of those who are forced through it, seems more bracing,
more exhilarating, more instinct with life than the stagnant atmosphere of
the plain. Here are wide spaces, pines and Scotch firs; but the spaces are
not wild, for innumerable white boards on posts, the marks of galloping
grounds, tell us that we are on the confines of Newmarket Heath and near
the metropolis of the turf. Such it has been since the days of Charles I,
and such, having regard to the fact that it has been for upwards of a
century and a half the head-quarters of the Jockey Club, it is likely to
remain, even though the "going" be better at Newbury in Berks, which is a
little nearer to London.
But we are not at Newmarket yet. There is the Devil's Dyke--irreverently
called the Ditch where it bisects the familiar course--to be crossed. Why
his Satanic Majesty should be credited with so many dykes it is not easy to
see. Devil's Punchbowls, of which there are scores, if not hundreds, in the
kingdom, are more natural and rational, for a being of Satan's traditional
environment might reasonably be credited with thirst upon a large scale and
with a liking for cold punch equal to that which was all but the temporary
ruin of Mr. Pickwick, and quite fatal for the time to his young friend upon
another memorable drive to Ipswich, for that was our destination too. The
devil did not make this dyke, running from Reach, north of the Great
Eastern Railway, to Ditton Green, near Wood Ditton, that is certain; yet
nobody knows exactly who the builders were. What is known is that it has a
rampart on the west side, and that the Iceni, of whom all that is necessary
will be told soon, held the land to the eastward, so far as land was held
in those days. Probably, like their successors in the same territory in
mediæval times, during the Stuart period, and now, they had a good conceit
of themselves and a robust contempt for their western neighbours, and
therefore, perhaps, they built them this rampart and digged this ditch, or
made their captives dig it for them, as a bulwark against the outer world.
It must be confessed, however, that thoughts and conversation ran not on
the Iceni, not on the violent deaths which came to most of them eighteen
centuries and a half ago, but on the death of one man of our time whom
Newmarket Heath had known as a familiar visitor. Only a few days before Sir
James Miller had died full of racing honours, but by no means of years. A
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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