From Wick to John O'Groat's is thirty-six miles, out and back. We were all day doing it, loafing along over a heather-strewn plain and lunching at the Hotel Huna (the significance of which name we forgot to ask.)
This ended our run to the North, five days in all, not a very terrific speed or a very venturesome proceeding, but as good a test of one's knowledge of how to keep his machine running as can be got anywhere. It was a sort of rapid review of many things of which we had hitherto only a scrappy, fragmentary knowledge, and is a trip which should not be omitted from any one's grand European itinerary if one has the time and means of covering it.
Part IV
In Belgium, Holland, And Germany
Chapter I
On The Road In Flanders
There has been a noticeable falling off in touring in Belgium. There is no reason for this except the caprice of fashion, and the automobile and its popularizing influence will soon change all this, in spite of the abominable stretches of paved highroads, which here and there and everywhere, and most unexpectedly, crop up and shake one almost to pieces, besides working dire disaster to the mechanical parts of one's automobile. The authorities are improving things, but it will be some time yet before Belgium is as free from pavé as is France.
The good roads of Belgium are as good as those anywhere to be found, and it is only the unlooked for and distressingly frequent stretches of paved highway which need give any concern.