Cycling to me is a very easy and pleasant exercise, but it is far more
than that; it is like passing through an endless picture-gallery
filled with masterpieces of form and colour. The roads of England not
only present these delights to the physical sense, but they stir the
imagination with historic visions from the earliest times. There are
the ancient camps, now silent and deserted, which become at the
bidding of fancy peopled with the unkempt and savage British, and
later with their well-disciplined and well-equipped Roman conquerers:
archers and men in armour appear; pilgrims' processions such as we
read of in Chaucer; knights and ladies on their stately steeds. There
are the ghosts of royal progresses, kings and queens, and wonderful
pageantry gorgeous in array; decorously ambling cardinals and abbots
with their trains of servitors; hawking parties with hawks and
attendants; soldiers after Sedgemoor in pursuit of Monmouth's
ill-fated followers; George IV. and his gay courtiers on the Brighton
road; beaux and beauties in their well-appointed carriages bound for
Tunbridge Wells, Cheltenham, or Bath; splendid teams with crowded
coaches, and great covered waggons laden with merchandise; the
highwayman at dusk in quest of belated travellers, and companies of
farmers and cattle-dealers riding home from market together for
safety.
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