At Castol there were three inns close to each other, in which, to judge only from the outside of the houses, little but poverty was to be expected. In the one at which I at length stopped there was only a landlady, a sick butcher, and a sick carter, both of whom had come to stay the night. This assemblage of sick persons gave me the idea of an hospital, and depressed me still more. I felt some degree of fever, was very restless all night, and so I kept my bed very late the next morning, until the woman of the house came and aroused me by saying she had been uneasy on my account. And now I formed the resolution to go to Leicester in the post-coach.
I was now only four miles from Loughborough, a small, and I think, not a very handsome town, where I arrived late at noon, and dined at the last inn on the road that leads to Leicester. Here again, far beyond expectation, the people treated me like a gentleman, and let me dine in the parlour.
From Loughborough to Leicester was only ten miles, but the road was sandy and very unpleasant walking.
I came through a village called Mountsorrel, which perhaps takes its name from a little hill at the end of it. As for the rest, it was all one large plain, all the way to Leicester.
Towards evening I came to a pleasant meadow just before I got to Leicester, through which a footpath led me to the town, which made a good appearance as I viewed it lengthways, and indeed much larger than it really is.
I went up a long street before I got to the house from which the post-coaches set out, and which is also an inn. I here learnt that the stage was to set out that evening for London, but that the inside was already full; some places were, however, still left on the outside.
Being obliged to bestir myself to get back to London, as the time drew near when the Hamburg captain, with whom I intend to return, had fixed his departure, I determined to take a place as far as Northampton on the outside.
But this ride from Leicester to Northampton I shall remember as long as I live.
The coach drove from the yard through a part of the house. The inside passengers got in in the yard, but we on the outside were obliged to clamber up in the public street, because we should have had no room for our heads to pass under the gateway.
My companions on the top of the coach were a farmer, a young man very decently dressed, and a blackamoor.