I WAS reading in Thomas Burke’s Book of the Inn, ‘To get the full savour of an old inn you should come to it at night, and best of all a winter night, or twilight, when the mists are rising and the soul is low, and a log fire and a dinner seem to be the twin stars of human aspiration. All of us know those moments, and that is why inns were made—to stand upon the pilgrim’s way … they are a sign to us to meet and mingle with our fellows.’
Surely the heart of every cyclist will warm to these old words and, like myself, they will probably recall summer days when the welcome sign of an inn has been just as acceptable as it would be in winter-time … days when the road has been a hot, white ribbon and one’s throat has become dry as the dust which clings to one’s wheels. On such a day I remember we propped our machines outside the Fish at Buttermere and joyously quaffed ale from the old brown mugs edged with pewter which seemed so in keeping with the inn itself. I can still see the stuffed fish in its glass case in a place of honour in the hall.
And once we found the most attractive of inns in the most inaccessible place at the world’s edge; it seemed like the world’s edge, for we had been riding for hours through the splendour of a narrow mountain pass before we finally arrived, powdered from head to, foot with a fine yellow dust, at a point where we literally could go no farther. In front of us the sea; behind, the hills, majestic, remote and silent in fold after fold as far as the eye could see. We mopped our brows and looked at one another.
‘Whew!’ I said.
We dismounted and looked around us. There, perched on a rocky headland well above the level of the road was an inn! Kylesku Inn. We were well up in the Highlands of Scotland, to be precise in Sutherland, but no Grand Hotel could have been so welcome to weary travellers as that picturesque inn whose windows looked out on to a stretch of clear, translucent water broken here and there on this hot afternoon by the dark fins of porpoises gambolling near the surface.
A flight of thin wooden steps, weather-beaten and lichen-grey with age, went up from the roadway to the inn’s front door. On an old-fashioned hall-stand, planted immediately in front of the open door, a big iron bell bore the incongruous label—A.R.P. We picked it up and shook it gently, wondering if it had ever been put to the grim use for which it had originally been intended.
It would not be incorrect to say that the history of the English inn is bound up to the very core with the history of our land. The same fifteenth-century inn which the cyclist visits to-day may be the identical scene of some historical incident long since past; such is the Angel, at Grantham, with its elegant but well-worn façade facing the market square. Here, King Richard III signed Buckingham’s death warrant.
The New Inn, at Gloucester, provides an excellent example of the old type of coaching inn with the sleeping apartments grouped about a central court; in the olden days external galleries connected each floor. The court would be closed at night, but it would seem that our ancestors had no objection to going to bed via means of the open air. The New Inn has, of course, now been modernised, but the cobbled court-yard and the stone archways remain to remind us of the days of coach and horses, when bicycles as a means of long-distance travelling were still unknown.
A great many old inns up and down the country were built of stone and, because of their solid construction, have suffered comparatively little change in their outward appearance. Where repair has been necessary oft-times the original has been spoiled by the introduction of something new and up to date, quite out of keeping with the antiquity of the inn. Such, however, is not the case with the Lygon Arms, at Broadway in Worcestershire, where restoration and renewal have been effected with good taste and artistry. Broadway, Incidentally, is well worth a visit by the cyclist touring Worcester shire. It is a most picturesque village of thatched roofs and old cottages, carefully preserved as an all-time example of the beauty and charm of an English village.
How many tourists to Derbyshire have encountered The Bull i’ th’ Thorns? I remember this hostelry for its dark panelled walls with bright copper warming-pans resting against their rich sombreness; for the mantelpiece bedecked with all manner of curios, including a galleon with bellying sails, a Toby jug grinning impishly, a pair of brass candle sticks and snuffers, a seventeenth-century powder-horn of bone beautifully etched with figures, and two black and white morions (helmets) engraved with the fleur-de-lys. In addition, swords and sabres lie clamped across each other on the walls, whilst the swinging sign at the inn door realistically depicts the infuriated bull well and truly entangled i’ th’ thorns!
The country inn, in catering for the passing wayfarer or the traveller by coach, is the ancestor of all our hostelries. To it can now be added our youth hostels and holiday fellowship centres: we can also include farmhouses in remote spots, which wear for the cyclist the welcome sign—C.T.C.
All of them, when the day’s run is over, provide a centre for discussion, for the enjoyment of creature comforts and relaxation, and no more fitting finale could be quoted than the words of the famous Dr. Johnson: ‘There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern. You are sure you are welcome; and the more good things you call for the welcomer you are. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.’
Those words were written as long ago as 1776, but the truth of them remains with us to this day.