The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Part 9

Road narrow but good. A glorious morning, with a blue sky and delicious breeze.

Greensward at each side of the road, with ragged hedges and stunted oaks and ashes; roses in the hedgerows, golden celandine on the sward, and tall crimson silenes everywhere. By-and-bye the country opens, and we come upon a splendid view; and here is a sight--a hedgerow of roses nearly a mile long! Here are as many of these wildly beautiful flowers as would drape Saint Paul's Cathedral, dome and all.

We pa.s.s Sibson, with its very quaint old inn and little ivy-covered church surmounted by a stone cross; and Twycross, a most healthy and pretty rural village. There we unlimbered to dine, and in the afternoon went on towards our destination. Past Gopsal Park, with its quaint old lodge-gates and grand trees, on through dark waving woods of beech, of oak, and ash, on through lanes with hedgerows at each side, so tall that they almost meet at the top. We cross the railway now to avoid a steep bridge. Meesham is far away on the hill before us, and looks very romantic and pretty from the bridge. Its ancient church rears its steeple skyward, high over the houses that cl.u.s.ter round it, giving the place the appearance of a cathedral city in miniature. The romance vanishes, though, as soon as we enter the town. One long, steep street leads through it, its houses are of brick and most uninteresting, and the public-houses are so plentifully scattered about that thirst must be a common complaint here.

Ashby-de-la-Zouch lies above us and before as at last, and strangely picturesque it looks. Bows of queer-shaped trees are on each side of us; up yonder, in front, is a graveyard on a braeland; farther to the right a tall church spire, and flanking all, and peeping through the greenery of trees, is the ruined castle.

Market-day in Ashby, and we are mobbed whenever we stop to do some shopping.

The church here is well worthy of a visit; so too is the castle, but tourists ought to refresh their minds before spending a few days here by once more reading "Ivanhoe."

It was hard, uphill work from Ashby; drag, drag, drag; horses tired, Pea-blossom limping, and all weary.

At the hilltop we came into quite a Highland country, and thence we could catch glimpses of lovely scenery and far-off blue hills.

The effects of the sunlight on the green oak woods and the yellow ashes were very charming.

Lount at last; a humble inn, quiet, kindly people, and a little meadow.

CHAPTER NINE.

A QUIET SUNDAY AT LOUNT--A VISIT TO A POTTERY--BEESTON HALL--A BROILING DAY.

"How still the morning of this hallowed day!

Hushed is the voice of rural labour, The ploughboy's whistle and the milkmaid's song."

June 28th.

The country is indeed a Highlands in miniature. I might describe the scenery in this way: Take a sheet of paper and thereon draw irregular lines, across and across, up and down, in any conceivable direction.

These lines, then, shall represent blackthorn hedges bounding fields of flowering gra.s.s and hay. Place trees in your picture anywhere, and, here and there, a wood of dwarfed oak, and dot the field-nooks with picturesque-looking cattle-huts. In the centre let there be a cl.u.s.ter of irregularly-built brick-tiled houses and the domes of a pottery works. This, then, is Lount and its surroundings, where we are now bivouacked. But to complete the sketch there must be footpaths meandering through the meadows, with gaps in the hedges for rustic stiles. Nor must the cattle be forgotten.

And all the country visible from this point is broken up into round hills, and each field is a collection of smaller hills, shaped like waves of a storm-tossed ocean.

How still and quiet it is! And above the green of fields and woods is a blue, blue sunny sky. Larks are singing up yonder, their songs mingling sweetly with the chiming of the church bells that comes floating over the hills, rising and falling as the breeze does, now high and clear, now soft and far-away like.

I had the caravan half-filled this morning with bright-eyed, wondering children. A parent brought me a red cotton handkerchief.

"T'missus," he explained, "was makin' oop a pie, and I thought upon thee loike."

It was kindly, and I couldn't refuse the gift, though gooseberry pies form no part of the Wanderer's _menu_.

Ten o'clock pm.--The full moon has just risen over the dark oak woods; a strangely white dense fog has filled all the hollows--a fog you can almost stretch out your hands and touch. The knolls in the fields all appear over it, looking like little islands in the midst of an inland sea.

The corncrake is sounding his rattle in the hayfields--a veritable voice of the night is he--and not another sound is to be heard.

Pa.s.sed a garden a few minutes ago while walking out. Such a sight!

Glowworms in thousands; far more lovely than fireflies in an Indian jungle.

To bed.

_June 29th_.--We got under way by 8:30, after a brief visit to the Coleorton Pottery. This place has an ugly enough appearance outside, but is very interesting internally. The proprietor kindly showed my coachman and me over the works. We saw the great heaps of blue clay that had been dug from the hillside and left exposed for weeks to the weather, the tanks in which it is mixed with water, the machinery for washing and sifting it, the clay being finally boiled to the consistency of putty. An old man took dabs of this putty and cast them on a revolving table, smiling as he did so as he watched our wondering looks, for lo! cups and saucers and teapots seemed to grow up under his fingers, and a whole tea-set was produced more quickly than one could have brewed a cup of tea.

A somewhat misty morning, but roads good though hilly, and scenery romantic. But at Castle Donington, a long brick town, the scene changes. Away go hill and dale, away goes all romance, and we pa.s.s through a flat country, with nothing in it to enlist sympathy save the trees and rose-clad hedges.

But soon again comes another change, and we cross the broad and silvery Trent, stopping, however, on the bridge to admire the view.

We arrive at Long Eaton, and encamp by the roadside to cook dinner.

Rows of ugly brick houses, a lazy ca.n.a.l with banks black with coal dust; the people here look as inactive as does their ca.n.a.l. Took the wrong turning and went miles out of our way.

We were stormed on our exit from Long Eaton by hordes of Board School children. They cl.u.s.tered round us like locusts, they swarmed like bees, and hung to the caravan in scores. No good my threatening them with the whip. I suppose they knew I did not mean much mischief, and one score was only frightened off to make room for another.

At Beeston, near Nottingham, I got talking to a tricyclist; a visit to a caravan followed, and then an introduction to a wealthy lace merchant.

The latter would not hear of my going two miles farther to an inn. I must come into his grounds. So here in a cosy corner of the lawn of Beeston Hall lies the Wanderer, overshadowed by giant elms and glorious purple beeches, and the lace manufacturer and his wife are simply hospitality personified.

Such is the glorious uncertainty of a gentleman gipsy's life--one night bivouacked by a lonely roadside in a black country, another in a paradise like this.

_July 2nd_.--A broiling hot day--almost too hot to write or think. At present we are encamped on the road, two miles from Worksop to the south. Tired though the horses were, we pushed on and on for miles, seeking shade but finding none; and now we have given up, and stand in the glaring sunshine. Roads are of whitest limestone, and, though there is little wind, every wheel of every vehicle raises a dust and a powder that seem to penetrate our very pores. We are all languid, drowsy, lethargic. Polly the parrot alone appears to enjoy the heat and the glare. The haymakers in yonder field are lazy-looking, silent, and solemn--a melting solemnity; the martins on that single telegraph-wire rest and pant open-mouthed, while the cattle in the meadow, with tails erect, go flying from end to end and back again in a vain attempt to escape from the heat and the flies.

But the flowers that grow by the wayside and trail over the hedges revel in the sunshine--the purple vetches, the red clover, the yellow wild-pea, and the starry Margueritas. Roses in sheets are spread over the hawthorn fences, and crimson poppies dot the cornfields. The white clover is alive with bees. This seems a bee country; everybody at present is either drumming bees or whitewashing cottages.

Got up to-day and had breakfast shortly after six. The kindly landlord of the Greyhound, Mr Scothern, and genial Mr Tebbet, one of his Grace the Duke of Portland's head clerks, had promised to drive me through the forest grounds of Welbeck.

As the day is, so was the morning, though the sun's warmth was then pleasant enough.

Our drive would occupy some two hours and a half, and in that time we would see many a "ferlie," as the Scotch say. The bare impossibility of giving the reader anything like a correct account of this most enjoyable ride impresses me while I write, and I feel inclined to throw down my pen. I shall not do so, however, but must leave much unsaid. If any one wishes to see the country around here as I have seen it this morning, and wander in the forest and enjoy Nature in her home of homes, he must come to Welbeck in summer. Never mind distance; come, you will have something to dream pleasantly about for many a day.

A visit to the great irrigation ca.n.a.l, by which all the drainage from Mansfield is carried along, and utilised by being allowed to flood meadows, might not appear a very romantic way of beginning a summer morning's outing. But it was interesting nevertheless. The meadows which are periodically flooded are wondrously green; three crops of hay are taken from each every season. They are on the slope, the ca.n.a.l running along above. The pure water that drains from these meadows finds its way into a river or trout stream that meanders along beneath them, and is overhung by rocks and woodland. Fish in abundance are caught here, and at present are being used to stock ponds and lochs on the duke's estate.

We soon crossed this stream by a Gothic bridge, and plunged into what I may call a new forest. There are fine trees here in abundance, but it is a storm-tossed woodland, and much of the felled timber is so twisted in grain as to be useless for ordinary purposes.

We saw many trees that had been struck by lightning, their branches hurled in all directions. Up a steep hill after leaving this forest, and stopping at an old-fashioned inn, we regaled ourselves on ginger-ale. The landlord pointed with some pride to the sign that hung over the door.

"The duke himself--the old duke, sir, his Grace of the leathern breeches--brought that sign here himself--in his own hands and in his own carriage, and it isn't many real gentlemen that would have done that, sir!"

The memory of the old duke is as much reverenced here, it appears to me, as that of Peter the Great is in Russia. The stories and anecdotes of his life you hear in the neighbourhood would fill a volume. People all admit he was eccentric, but his eccentricity filled many a hungry mouth, soothed the sorrows of the aged, and made many and many a home happy.

The tunnel towards Warsop is about two miles long, lighted by gas at night, and from windows above by day; there are a riding-school and wonderful stables underground, ballroom, etc, etc. I am writing these lines within a quarter of a mile of the open-air stables. The place looks like a small city.

Just one--only one--anecdote of the old duke's eccentricity. It was told me last night, and proves his Grace to have been a man of kindly feeling. A certain architect had finished--on some part of the ground-- a large archway and pillared colonnade, at great expense to the duke, no doubt. It did not please the latter, however, but he would not wound the architect's feelings by telling him so. No, but one evening he got together some two hundred men, and every stone was taken away and the ground levelled before morning. The architect must have stared at the transformation when he came next day, but the matter was never even referred to by the duke, and of course the architect said nothing.

The country through which we went after pa.s.sing the duke's irrigation works was a rolling one, hill and dale, green fields, forest, loch, and stream. There are wild creatures in it in abundance. Yonder are two swans sailing peacefully along on a little lake; here, near the edge of the stream, a water-hen with a brood of little black young ones. She hurries them along through the hedge as our trap approaches, but the more hurry the less speed, and more than one poor little mite tumbles on its back, and has to be helped up by the mother. Yonder on the gra.s.s is a brace of parent partridges; they do not fly away; their heads are together; they are having a loving consultation on ways and means, and the young brood is only a little way off. Before us now, and adown the road, runs a great c.o.c.k pheasant; he finally takes flight and floats away towards the woods. Look in the stream, how the glad fish leap, and the bubbles escaping from the mud in that deep dark pool tell where some fat eel is feeding. We pause for a moment to admire the trees, and the music of birds and melancholy croodling of the cushat fall upon our ears, while young rabbits scurry about in all directions, and a cuckoo with attendant linnet flies close over our horse's head.

Not far from the little inn where we stopped we saw the ruins of King John's palace. But little is left of it now, the stones having been put to other purposes, and it looks as like the ruins of an old barn as those of a palace.

We leave the road and pa.s.s into the forest proper--the old Sherwood Forest, sacred to the memory of Robin Hood and Little John and the merry monks of the olden time.

We enter Birkland. Saving those wondrous and ancient oaks that stand here and there, and look so weird and uncanny as almost to strike the beholder with awe, the forest is all new. Long straight broad avenues go in all directions through it. The ground on these is as level as a lawn, and just as soft and green. Here is the Shamble Oak. Its weirdlike arms are still green, though it is said to be 1,700 years old, and may be more. The trunk, round which twelve good strides will hardly take you, is sadly gutted by fire. Some boys set it alight in trying to smoke out a hornet's hive. Here, in this oak, it is said, Robin Hood hung his slaughtered deer, and, in more modern times, keepers and poachers used it as a larder.

A quaint and pretty log-hut _a la Russe_ has recently been erected near the Shamble Oak. It is not yet furnished, but we found our way inside, the keeper in attendance here giving us great and impressive injunctions to wipe our feet and not step off the canvas. I wonder he did not bid us remove our shoes.