Miles aren't tyrants any more, but slaves to the mastery of good motor-cars; and any motoring Monte Cristo can fairly exclaim, "The world is mine!" (N. B. This isn't original. Sir Lionel said it at lunch.) From North Wales to Cheshire looks a long run on the map, but motors are made to live down maps; and we arrived in this astonishingly perfect old town early in the afternoon, coming by way of Capel Curig (whence we saw Snowdon crowned with a double rainbow), sweet Bettws-y-coed, or "station in the wood," and so down the river valley in a bird swoop, to noble Conway, with its castle that was once a famous Welsh fortress. Now, in piping days of peace, its towers and turrets still dominate bridge and river, and the great pile is as fine, in its way, as Carcassone. Don't you remember, it was from Conway Castle that Richard the Second started out to meet Bolingbroke?
"Its twenty-one towers and turrets still dominate bridge and river"
We stopped to take photographs and buy a few small pearls from the "pearl-breeding river"; and while we gazed our fill at the mighty monument, we learned from a guardian that in old days a certain Lady Erskine hired the castle for six shillings and eightpence a year, in addition to a "dish of fish for the Queen," when her majesty chanced to pass!
At Colwyn Bay we lunched early, at a charming hotel in a garden above a sea of Mediterranean blue; and the red-roofed town along the shore reminded me of Dinard. After that, coming by Abergele and Rhuddlan to Chester, the way was no longer through a region of romance and untouched beauty. There were quarries, which politely though firmly announced their hours of blasting, and road users accommodated themselves to the rules as best they might. But there were castles on the heights, as well as quarries in the depths; and though Sir Lionel says that inhabitants of Wales never think of turning to look at such a "common object of the seashore" as a mere castle, I haven't come to that state of mind yet.
Near Rhuddlan there was a tremendous battle at the end of the seventh century, out of which so many fine songs have been made that the Welsh princes and nobles who were slain have never lost their glory. There's a castle, too (of course), but the best thing that happened for us was a gloriously straight road like a road of France, and as nobody was on it save ourselves at that moment, we did about six miles before the next moment, when others might claim a share. I believe the Holyhead road is very celebrated.
Soon we had to turn our backs upon a mystic mountain-land that ringed us in, and face the sea once more—a wide water-horizon whose line was broken with great ships steaming from all parts of the world to Liverpool.
Apollo had seemed a little faint before luncheon, because of some inner disturbance, but he was flying fast as a saint on his way to Paradise as we crossed the Dee, into England out of Wales, and sprang into Gladstone country.
When people are obliged to reach a town by rail, there must be disappointments to lovers of the picturesque, as you and I know by experience. It's like arriving at a house by the tradesmen's entrance; but with a motor one sails up to the front door through the park.
Of all the towns to which Apollo has brought us, the entrance to Chester to-day was the best. The first effect of colour left on my eyes the impression of sunset-red, warm as copper beeches. The place seemed to be lit with fading firelight, and I wondered at the soft glow everywhere, until I realized that the big buildings—the Cathedral, the great houses and the old city wall—were all made of rosy sandstone.