It is hard to believe on a bright May morning that here, in this blossoming, picturesque little village of Chippenham, on one bitterly cold morning in the month of April, 1812, when the Bath coach reached its posting-house (the same, perhaps, Mr. Up-to-Date Automobilist, at which you have slept the night—worse luck), two of its outside passengers were found frozen to death, and a third all but dead. The old lithographs which pictured the "Royal Mail" stuck in a snow-drift, and the unhappy passengers helping to dig it out, are no longer apocryphal in your mind after you have heard this bit of "real history," which happened, too, in one of England's southern counties. The romance of other days was often stern and uncomfortable reality of a most bitter kind.
We left Chippenham, finally, very late in the day, lost our way at unsign-boarded and puzzling crossroads, had two punctures in a half a dozen miles, and ultimately reached the centre of Bath, over the North Parade Bridge—for which privilege we paid three pence, another imposition, which, however, we could have avoided had we known the devious turnings of the main road into town.
In two days we had covered something like two hundred and fifty miles in and out of highways and byways, had followed the Thames for its entire boatable length, and had crossed England,—not a very great undertaking as automobile tours go, but a varied and enjoyable one in spite of the restrictions put upon the free passage of automobiles by the various governing bodies and the indifferent hotel-keepers.
Bath and its attractions for visitors are quite the best things of their kind in all England, in spite of the fact that the attractions, the teas, the concerts, and the lectures—to say nothing of drinking and bathing in the waters—lack individuality.
We stayed the round of the clock at Bath, two rounds and a half, in fact, in that we did not leave until the second morning after our arrival, and absorbed as much of the spirit and association of the place as was possible, including sundry gallons of the bubbling spring-water.
Bath has pleased many critical souls, James McNeill Whistler for one, who had no patience with other English resorts. It pleased us, too. It was so different.
From Bath to Bristol is a dozen miles only, and the topographical characteristics change entirely, following the banks of the little river Avon. Bristol was a great seaport in days gone by, but today only coasters and colliers make use of its wharves. The town is charmingly situated, but it is unlovely, and, for the tourist, is only a stepping-stone to somewhere else. The Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland directs one to the suburb of Clifton, or rather to Clifton Down, for hotel accommodation, but you can do much better than that by stopping at the Half Moon Hotel in the main street, a frankly commercial house, but with ample garage accommodation and good plain fare, of which roast little pig, boiled mutton, cauliflower, and mashed potatoes, with the ever recurring apple tart, form the principal items.