THE RUINS, VIRGINIA WATER.
Leaving Virginia Water by the way we came, and turning to the right, as though for Bagshot, a right-hand road is immediately seen, with a finger-post directing to Ascot and Bracknell. This is a fine undulating stretch of sandy road following the palings of Windsor Park as far as the hamlet of Black Nest, where it bears to the left and goes direct, past Sunninghill, to Ascot, Bullbrook, and Bracknell. Nothing is seen of Sunninghill save the post-office on the left hand. A modern inn, also on the left, bearing the sign of “The Wells,” will be noticed. It derives its name from a chalybeate spring in the garden.
Ascot, to which we now come, up a rise, is a depressing backwoods-settlement kind of a place, with no history except that which belongs to a hundred years of horse-racing. The village (for such, presumably, it should be called) is singular in consisting of practically a one-sided street. This is made up of a row of shops and villas and the back of the long range of buildings belonging to the racecourse, a white clock-tower overlooking all. The whole place is built on what was once the desolate heath of Ascot—and looks it! “Royal Ascot” they call it in the racing season, and it may look the part with the fashionable and gaily-dressed crowds then assembled, but few places can possibly appear so forlorn at any other time.
The cyclist welcomes the fine long descent that enables him to hurry away. Indeed, the splendid coasts one may get on the way from Black Nest to Bracknell form practically the only good features of these six miles; and in fine weather they are exhilarating. But when slithering through the mud that succeeds a showery day, with, perhaps, the hoarse-tongued bell of Ascot Priory sounding like a funeral knell in one’s ears, this bit of country weighs heavily on one’s spirits.
Bullbrook, which lies in a hollow and is just a modern hamlet of Bracknell, is succeeded by a sharp rise to Bracknell itself, a little town of no particular interest. Turn down here to the left, past the (modern) church. Coming to Bracknell Station, turn to the left across the bridge that spans the railway, and then the second to the right, if you wish to look at the (also modern) church of Easthampstead. Returning from this, bear to the right, then first to the left, and then to the right again, along the palings of South Hill Park, and you are on the straight four-mile stretch to Bagshot, through the densest pine-woods all the way, with grass rides now and again on either side, giving views of infinities of pines. It is a lonely road, aromatic with the odours of these woodlands, and reverberant with the scurrying of the partridges or the hollow ejaculations of the pheasants. Perhaps a hare or rabbit scuttles across the road, or you may meet a velveteen-coated gamekeeper, his gun under his arm; but never another cyclist. It is a splendid road for speed, going in this direction, and the four miles may be done with ease in a quarter of an hour. Nearing the Bagshot end, the gates of the Duke of Connaught’s seat, Bagshot Park, are passed, and turning to the right, over the railway bridge, Bagshot village is reached, past an old white-faced inn—the “Cricketers.”
Bagshot is not the busy place it was in the old coaching days, when, standing as it does on the old road to Exeter, it did a big trade with passing travellers. Its old inns are mostly gone, with the stories that belonged to them; but the “King’s Arms” remains, and the tale of how the “Golden Farmer” was brought a captive to its door one night. The person who went by that name lived on the hill outside Bagshot, and was known for always paying his debts in gold, instead of by bills or cheques. Contemporary with him was a terrible highwayman who never took anything but gold coin off the coach-passengers whom he plundered on Bagshot Heath, rejecting jewellery or notes. One night a more than usually courageous traveller shot him when his back was turned, and when the wounded highwayman was brought here, he was discovered to be the highly respectable farmer who paid only in specie. He was eventually tried, found guilty, hanged, and gibbeted on his own threshold, on the “Jolly Farmer” hill, on the way to Yorktown.
A winding lane leads out of the south side of Bagshot’s one street to Windlesham, a mile and a half distant, falling to the left across the Windle brook. The village is mildly pretty, the rebuilt church wildly grotesque. Away to the right, in the distance, rise the bleak and barren Chobham Ridges, and three miles and a half onward, away from the Ridges, is Chobham village, the roads to it duly sign-posted and the way alternating with patches of heath and pine trees and with cultivated fields, won with much toil and expense from the hungry Bagshot sands. To the north of Chobham village lies the bleak and barren common, and the hamlet curiously named Up Down. On the common took place the elaborate military picnic, dignified by the name of “manœuvres,” over forty years ago, at a time when the military system of the country was at its lowest ebb of inefficiency.
Chobham village is old-world, and being quite far removed from any railway station, and rather inaccessible, is consequently unspoiled. The Bourne stream runs picturesquely down one side of the village street in a deep and narrow channel, spanned by footbridges and bordered by a row of pollarded limes. Quaint old brick and half-timbered houses are a feature of the place. The church, with sturdy stone tower and leaden spire, is unusually rugged and weather-beaten, and is roofed with stone slabs instead of with the more usual tiles; altogether a homely and cosy village, that seems to have no sort of commerce with the outer world, and would appear to be rather proud of the fact.
Turning back from the village, and then turning to the right, four miles, mostly of ghastly heath, that might fitly have been the scene where the three witches met Macbeth, interpose between this and the hamlet of Ottershaw, where there are cross-roads, a chapel built by Sir Gilbert Scott, and Ottershaw Park, in which, secluded from the road and adjoining the mansion, is a kitchen built in the shape of a church by a former proprietor, who must have had the greatest reverence for his stomach. Turning to the left after passing the cross-roads, we reach Chertsey, past the well-wooded park of Botleys, and come again into that uninteresting town over the level crossing at the railway station.