The Peculiar Appeal of Motoring - France, the Ideal Land of the Motorist - Where Our Own

Land Fails - Chateaux-land - Suggestions to the Novice think the pleasures of motoring can be summed up in one word - freedom.

At no sport and in no circumstances is it possible to be so utterly untrammelled by the works and needs of mankind as on a motorcar trip. The yachtsman comes very near it, I admit, but he is more tied by considerations of weather than the motorist, and, unless he owns a steam yacht, he is the slave of the winds.

The Fascination Of The Open Road

The splendid isolation, the magnificent detachment from the rest of the world which is the heritage of the motorist, detachment and isolation which can be abandoned at a moment's notice, are the real secrets of the immense hold which motor-touring takes upon its devotees.

The whole thing, from the moment when the bare suggestion of a tour is born to the time when, the tour over, one lives through it all over again in happy remembrance, is full of a careless joy which no other pastime can afford. There is the planning of the trip, the poring over maps, the discussions on roads, hotels, and places to be seen, and, lastly, the fascinating week of preparation before the start.

The all-important question of luggage has to be considered most carefully, the places on the car to be allotted to the various bags and cases measured anxiously, and the problem of "luggage in advance" to be solved.

And then, at last, the great day when the good car, loaded with its happy passengers and their fascinating paraphernalia of travel, stands purring before the door, ready for the adventures of the open road. A few final farewells, a last look-round to see that all is well, and the party are off.

From the moment the clutch is let in and the car glides away, that glorious sense of freedom descends upon them and never leaves them till they are back again. The world lies before them, offering every kind of delightful adventure, and it is with the ardent expectation of childhood that they skim out upon the merry road.

The Playground Of The Motorist

Praise unstinted has been lavished upon many countries for their qualities as ideal touring lands, but after roaming many, many thousands of miles over Europe, I look upon France as still the finest playground for the happy motorist. It is, in the first place, the birth-place of motoring as we know it, and there alone, of all countries blessed with roads, is the path of the car and its owners made really smooth. Hotels are good and plentiful; repairers and dealers are competent, numerous, and, for the most part, honest. Places of interest and beauty abound, and the roads are the best in the world.

Our own island offers us some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, but it fails in the most essential point - facilities for getting lost and for providing that exquisite feeling, so dear to the traveller, of being the first comer. No matter where you may go - in the Highlands or in Wales - you are bound to come upon other would-be adventurers every ten miles. The land, lovely as it is, is too small for us.

In France you may feel absolutely alone, seeing no other car for a whole run of a couple of hundred miles, even on so well-worn a highway as the road from Paris to the Riviera. And to feel that you are the only people in the world at any given moment constitutes the greatest joy of the whole complex mass of the divine happiness of the motoring traveller.

For the tourist in Great Britain there is no necessary counsel. You have merely to drive away from your own door on any given morning, and steer over roads which are perfectly familiar, to the first resting-place you have chosen. Short of actual mishap, nothing will prevent you getting there, and you can map out the whole trip with the certainty of a railway journey.

A Tour Abroad

That is where the difference lies between a tour at home and abroad. The destination is everything here; whereas it is the getting there that counts in France. You may pass the night in cities famous in European history, and have your mind so full of the thrilling joy for the open road behind and before you that you do but scant justice to the things of absorbing interest around you.

I have spent a night and part of a day in Poictiers and in Orange, and, owing to the intoxicating influence of the road, have given but mechanical and perfunctory heed to all there was to be seen there. Later, it seemed incredible that I could ever have been through such places.

The one exception to this is, I think, the Loire. The chateaux which stand upon its banks, mirrored for so many eventful centuries in its silver stream, have each so strong a personality, so intrusive a charm, that, for once, one is absorbed wholly in the joy of the present, and the great open road, with its joys and adventures, is forgotten in the living scenes of history caught and held for you in those grey stones.

For your first trip, let me urge upon you to go to France and, if possible, to the Loire.

Drive to Southampton, ship yourself and your car to Havre, and thence, by easy stages, drive to Rouen, Orleans, Blois, Tours, and Saumur. France is the land of chivalry (even in these Socialistic days), and two women with a car will find their ways made as smooth and pleasant as in their home-country - more so, in all probability. When you have enjoyed to the full the intimate, personal beauty of chateaux-land, driving whithersoever the whim takes you, pulling up every night at the same neat; clean, little riverside inn, waited on and cossetted by the most smiling and voluble of "patrones," finding something new to wonder at and admire every hour, the love of the road will envelop you for ever, and thereafter you will plan, without fear or distrust, the conquest of the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Auvergne, the Tyrol, and the rose-clouded ways of Dalmatia.