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3 - Portrait tablets
2 - PC/landscape tablets
4 - L/scape smartphone
5 - Portrait smartphone
Section 3:
The Roads
The world of long-distance coach travel
The first roads
The Celts were trading across Europe and although nothing remains of their roads, they must have followed fixed routes
The Romans built roads, famously straight. These are the first roads that we in England are familiar with
After the Romans left, our roads fell into disrepair. Find out what happened
After the dissolution of the monasteries, even the church’s work ended
During the Stuart period the first beginnings of improvement appeared
The first proposal to improve Britain’s roads
The first person to take active steps to improve the roads
As pressure for improved transport links grew, this engineer made a real difference
Perhaps the most famous roadmaker, His method is still essentially in use today
Britain’s roads at last allow fast long-distance travel
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Anecdotes written by people who actually travelled on the coaches
The coachmen, the inns, the coach proprietors - they’re all here. Come in and meet them
Britain’s roads were pretty impassable for most of our history. Coach travel was very difficult until they improved
Wheeled transport evolved over many years. Find out how coaches developed
Sources and information about how I came to create this website
Home Page of the Coaching Website
These days we take travel for granted. Cars buses, trains and aeroplanes allow us to cross the country and the globe with ease. We travel for many reasons - military, business, social - but also purely for the love of travel itself.
It was not always so . . .
It seems incredible to our modern eyes, but after the Romans withdrew the roads of Britain became all but impassable - and remained so until the 1700s! Only then did long distance travel on anything other than a horse become possible.
It was the Industrial Revolution and the need to move goods that drove improvement. But once it started, things changed relatively rapidly.
This section looks at roads and how they have changed over millennia and will set the Great Age of Coaching in perspective against the panoply of time.