The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan
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Stables Gordon. The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan
Preface
Chapter One. Introductory – Written Before Starting
Chapter Two. The Caravan Itself – First Trials – Getting Horsed
Chapter Three. First Experiences of Gipsy Life – The Trial Trip – A ThunderStorm on Maidenhead Thicket
Chapter Four. Twyford and the Regions around it
Chapter Five. A First Week’s Outing
Chapter Six. Our Last Spring Ramble
Chapter Seven. A Start for the Far North – From Reading to Warwick
Chapter Eight. Leamington and Warwick – A Lovely Drive – A Bit of Black Country – Ashby-de-la-Zouch
Chapter Nine. A Quiet Sunday at Lount – A Visit to a Pottery – Beeston Hall – A Broiling Day
Chapter Ten. Doncaster – Brentley – Askern – Dinner on a Yorkshire Wold
Chapter Eleven. A Day in the Life of a Gentleman Gipsy
Chapter Twelve. At Durham – The British Miner at Home – Gosforth – Among Northumbrian Banks – Across the Tweed
Chapter Thirteen. The Crew of the “Wanderer,” All Told
Chapter Fourteen. Letters Home, after being Months on the Road
Chapter Fifteen. The Humours of the Road – Inn Signs – What I am Taken for – A Study of Faces – Milestones and Finger-Posts – Tramps – The Man with the Iron Mask – The Collie Dog – Gipsies’ Dogs – A Midnight Attack on the Wanderer
Chapter Sixteen. Sunny Memories of the Border-Land
Chapter Seventeen. Scenes in Berwick – Border Marriages – Bonnie Ayton
Chapter Eighteen. The Journey to Dunbar – A Rainy Day
Chapter Nineteen. A Day at Pressmannan – The Fight for a Polonie Sausage – In the Haughs of Haddington – Mrs Carlile’s Grave – Genuine Hospitality
Chapter Twenty. Edinburgh – The Fisher Folks o’ Musselboro’ – Through Linlithgow to Falkirk – Gipsy-Folks
Chapter Twenty One. Glasgow and Grief – A Pleasant Meadow – Thunderstorm at Chryston – Strange Effects – That Terrible Twelfth of August – En Route for Perth and the Grampians
Chapter Twenty Two. On the High Road to the Highlands
Chapter Twenty Three. Snow-Posts – A Moonlight Ramble – Dalwhinnie – A Danger Escaped – An Ugly Ascent – Inverness at Last
Chapter Twenty Four. Wild Flowers – A Hedgerow in July – Hedgerows in General – In Woodland and Copse – In Fields and in Moorlands
Chapter Twenty Five. A Chapter about Children – Children in Bouquets – Children by the “sad sea-wave” – sweet maudie brewer – wee dickie ellis – the miner’s sprite
Chapter Twenty Six. From Inverness to London – Southward Away – The “Wanderer’s” Little Mistress – A Quiet Sabbath – A Dreary Evening at Aldbourne
Chapter Twenty Seven. Storm-Stayed at Brighton – Along the Coast and to Lyndhurst – The New Forest – Homewards through Hants
Chapter Twenty Eight. Caravanning for Health
Chapter Twenty Nine. The Cycle as Tender to the Caravan
Chapter Thirty. Hints to Would-be Caravannists
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No man who cannot live in his house on wheels, cook, eat, and sleep in, on, or under it, can say that he is cut out for a gipsy life. But to do this you require to have your temporary home well arranged – a perfect multum in parvo, a domus in minima. The chief faults of the old-fashioned caravan are want of space – two ordinary-sized adults can hardly move in it without trampling on each other’s toes – general stuffiness, heat from sky or stove, or probably both combined, and a most disagreeable motion when on the road. This latter is caused by want of good springs, and errors in the general build.
“The man who is master of a caravan,” says a writer, “enjoys that perfect freedom which is denied to the tourist, whose movements are governed by the time-table. He can go where he likes, stop when he lists, go to bed at the hour which suits him best, or get up or lie daydreaming, knowing there is not a train to catch nor a waiter’s convenience to consult. If the neighbourhood does not suit the van-dweller, all he has to do is to hitch in the horses and move to more eligible quarters. The door of his hotel is always open. There is no bill to pay nor anybody to ‘remember;’ and, if the accommodation has been limited, the lodger cannot complain of the charges. In a caravan one has all the privacy of a private residence, with the convenience of being able to wheel it about with a facility denied to the western settler, who shifts his ‘shanty’ from the ‘lot’ which he has leased to the more distant one which he has bought. In the van may, for all the passer-by can discover, be a library and drawing-room combined, or it may be bedroom and dining-room in one, though, as the pioneers in this mode of touring sleep under canvas, we may presume that they find the accommodation indoors a little stuffy.”
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“Figuratively speaking,” I replied, “I may have been at sea all my life, but not in reality. Is not,” I continued, parodying Shylock’s speech – “Is not a horse an animal? Hath not a horse feet, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with good oats, oftentimes hurt by the whip? Subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?”
The man scratched his head, looked puzzled, and we did not deal.
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