Disgraceful Rider

Hope I can write as well as this: “Away with 4 fresh horses from the Bald Faced Stag, where topers congregate about the door admiring… Now with clattering hoofs and striking out of fiery sparks, across the old stone bridge and down into the shadowy road and through the open gate and far away, away into the wold…. Past market gardens, early workmen, late stragglers… and in among the rattling pavements where a jaunty seat upon a coach is not so easy to preserve… until an old inn yard is gained”  How about this: “coachmen and coach guards…have long ago worked their last stage.. the old-fashioned postboy with his high white choker, gorgeous yellow waistcoat and wondrous pearl buttons has disappeared, vanished, evaporated.. ancient hostelries have been converted into private residences, inns into farmsteads, pikes and their querulous keepers have long since ceased… what has become of the vast army of horsekeepers and helpers ….”.  Tom Bradley’s Old Coaching Days in Yorkshire with illustrations of 1889 cannot be beaten – fantastic read.