In the summer of 1698 she rode more than 1,551 miles across England. She wrote down the ale, the roads and the beds.

When

undated, the 1680s and 1690s

Her own sum

She keeps no sum of miles on these

Counties reached

Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset

By way of

Newton Tony, Salisbury, Wilton, Blandford Forum, Poole, Corfe Castle, Swanage, Dorchester, Bridport, Lyme Regis, Stonehenge, Mere, Wincanton, Castle Cary, Warminster, Norton St Philip, Bath

Four loops out of the same village: Wiltshire, the Dorset coast, the plain at Stonehenge, and the road to Bath.

Home is Newton Tony, a Wiltshire village on the bare downs between Salisbury and Andover. Every journey begins and ends there. Her father, Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes, had been an officer in the Parliament's army; her grandfather was the first Viscount Saye and Sele. The early journeys are short and undated, and some of them she makes by coach with her mother: near Brackley a wheel jams between the stones and it takes several men to lift them out. In them she learns the trade: how far a day carries, what can be got out of an inn, what is worth writing down.

The Dorset coast she does as a family tour, house to house: Blandford, Poole, Brownsea Island, where she eats oysters on the spot, the ruins of Corfe Castle, Swanage, Dorchester, Bridport, Lyme. At Seacombe she picks shells off the beach. At Poole she takes a boat. It is the only stretch of the journal in which you can see a woman on holiday.

At Stonehenge she does something nobody else seems to have done then: she counts the stones. She writes that she has counted them often and reaches 91 every time, against the saying then current that they could not be counted twice alike.

Bath is the reason the journal exists at all. The hot waters were the treatment, and she used them for years. She describes everything: what it costs to go in, who leads you, what you wear in the water, how the pump works. It is the first evidence that her eye looks for procedures and prices rather than buildings.

When

undated, before 1697

Her own sum

She keeps no sum of miles here either

Counties reached

Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey, Middlesex

By way of

Newton Tony, Hungerford, Faringdon, Oxford, Abingdon, Newbury, Basingstoke, Alton, Petersfield, Chichester, Arundel, Dorking, Kingston upon Thames, London, Farnham, New Alresford, Winchester, Lyndhurst, Lymington, Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, Newport, Isle of Wight, Cowes, Ryde, Portsmouth, Southampton, Romsey, Bagshot

Two separate rides, joined at London: one out to Chichester, the other to the island and back through Southampton.

The first ride goes by Oxford and Abingdon, where the market cross stops her — the finest in England, she writes — and down to Chichester, a small city with four gates through which you can see clean from one side to the other. She climbs the cathedral tower, two hundred and sixty-odd steps, to look at the Isle of Wight and Spithead.

The second takes her through Winchester and the New Forest to Lymington, where she stands and watches salt being made out of sea water: pans, evaporation, boiling. Then she crosses to the island by boat, past Hurst Castle and the Needles, sees Yarmouth, Newport and Carisbrooke Castle with its forty-fathom well and its ass-driven wheel, and comes back from Ryde to Portsmouth in an hour.

At Portsmouth she goes aboard a ship of the line. Southampton she likes for a practical reason: the town lets no cart in, goods are carried on sledges, and the streets stay clean because of it. It is the kind of observation she makes throughout — not what a place looks like, but how it is kept.

When

May to July 1697

Her own sum

“in 7 weeks tyme about 635 miles that we went together”

Counties reached

Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Rutland, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire

By way of

London, Ware, Bishop's Stortford, Audley End, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Stamford, Stretton, Lincoln, Newark-on-Trent, Nottingham, Mansfield, Worksop, Doncaster, Tadcaster, York, Knaresborough, Harrogate, Boroughbridge, Ripon, Beverley, Kingston upon Hull, Burton Agnes, Scarborough, Malton, Pontefract, Rotherham, Chesterfield, Chatsworth, Bakewell, Buxton, Castleton, Ashbourne, Uttoxeter, Lichfield, Coventry, Warwick, Daventry, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St Albans

The first great journey, and the first dated thing in the whole journal: the manuscript heading reads “HERE BEGINS MY NORTHERN JOURNEY IN MAY 1697”. She leaves London through Hertfordshire, stops at Cambridge, where she is entertained at Trinity, and rides up through the fen country to Stamford and Lincoln. In Lincoln cathedral she pulls the clapper of the great bell herself.

At Nottingham she goes sixty steps down into a cellar cut out of the rock and drinks there. At York she stamps a half-crown at the mint. Then comes the part she is really after: the waters. Knaresborough, Harrogate, Copgrove, Ripon — she drinks sulphur springs by the quart, goes into St Mungo's cold well seven separate times, and records the taste, the colour and the effect of each.

She rides on to Scarborough and Hull, comes back through York and drops into the Peak, where she sees Chatsworth half rebuilt and goes into the caves at Castleton and Poole's Cavern by candlelight. At Chesterfield, on a Saturday market day, she buys two fat pullets for sixpence and works out with satisfaction what they would have cost in London.

She comes home by Lichfield, Coventry, Warwick and Northampton. At the end she does her sum: 635 miles in seven weeks, with no mishap. She writes “we went together” — she was not alone.

When

autumn 1697

Her own sum

“w^ch I Compleated in 5 days, and went 184 miles”

Counties reached

Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Middlesex, Sussex

By way of

Ware, Tilbury, Gravesend, Rochester, Sittingbourne, Canterbury, Dover, Deal, Sandwich, Maidstone, Dartford, Greenwich, London, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Goudhurst, Rye, Winchelsea

Dashed: the days at Tunbridge Wells, Rye and Winchelsea. She adds them herself as an aside, “shall Insert something of Tunbridge”, outside the run of five days.

That autumn she does Kent, and this time she keeps the count of days: 184 miles in five. She crosses the Thames by the Tilbury ferry to Gravesend, sees the yards at Chatham where ships of the line were building, and rides to Canterbury.

There she goes into a house with twenty silk looms in it and looks at the paper mill. At Dover she climbs a hundred and twenty steps in the castle tower. At Sandwich she finds a town falling down: you enter by a gate and leave by a gate, and almost everything between them is ready to drop.

She comes back through Maidstone on a Thursday, which is market day. Then she adds, at the end, the pages on Tunbridge Wells, whose waters she has drunk “many years w^{th} great advantage”, and on Rye and Winchelsea. She sets them aside as an aside: they are not part of the five days.

When

summer 1698

Her own sum

The first part of the summer's “above 1551 miles”

Counties reached

Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire

By way of

London, Ware, Bishop's Stortford, Great Dunmow, Colchester, Ipswich, Woodbridge, Saxmundham, Beccles, Norwich, Wymondham, Thetford, Bury St Edmunds, Ely, Huntingdon, Peterborough, Wansford, Uppingham, Leicester, Market Bosworth, Tamworth, Lichfield, Wolseley, Stafford, Derby, Burton upon Trent

The title she gives this summer is “MY GREAT JOURNEY TO NEWCASTLE AND TO CORNWALL”, and underneath it she writes what it actually is: “the account of many journeys into most parts of England”. Not every part. Most.

She sets out eastward. At Colchester she pays dear for the pleasure of eating the oysters where they come from. At Ipswich it is Saturday, market day, and she sees butter sold by the pint, twenty ounces for sixpence. At Norwich she climbs the castle hill and counts the churches.

Then she goes down into the fens. Ely is where the journal loses its manners: she calls it the dirtiest place she ever saw, and her chamber was twenty steps up and still full of frogs and slow-worms. On the flooded causeway before the city her horse makes for deeper water and is nearly lost in a dike.

From Peterborough she cuts west through Uppingham and Leicester to Wolseley in Staffordshire, where she stays six weeks with relations. From there she makes short rides: to Derby, where a supper of shoulder of mutton, bread and beer costs five shillings and eightpence for herself and two servants, and to Burton, and to Stafford.

When

summer 1698

Her own sum

The second part of the same summer

Counties reached

Staffordshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Westmorland, Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire

By way of

Wolseley, Stafford, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Nantwich, Chester, Hawarden, Flint, Holywell, Liverpool, Prescot, Wigan, Preston, Garstang, Lancaster, Kendal, Windermere, Ambleside, Penrith, Carlisle, Gretna, over the Sark, Longtown, Brampton, Haltwhistle, Hexham, Newcastle upon Tyne, Chester-le-Street, Durham, Darlington, Richmond, Boroughbridge, Knaresborough, Leeds, Elland, Rochdale, Manchester

Two loops out of England: over the Dee into Flintshire, and over the river Sark into Scotland.

At Chester she crosses the bridge over the Dee and leaves England. The mayor of the city sends his son to guide her as far as Hawarden, because the sands are dangerous to strangers. She goes to St Winefride's Well at Holywell, where she watches Catholic pilgrims kneeling in the water, and notes drily that Welsh is spoken there. She fords the Dee on the sands coming back, with two guides.

She rides up through Liverpool — which she sees growing out of a few fishermen's houses into a town built “after the London fashion” — through Wigan, Preston and Lancaster to Kendal and Windermere, where she takes a boat to the island and watches oat clap-bread being made. It is one of the earliest descriptions of the Lakes by somebody who went there.

At Penrith and Carlisle she is in the border country. At Carlisle she pays the dearest reckoning in the journal, and then takes a guide and crosses into Scotland over the river Sark. She gets as far as Addison Bank, some sixty miles from Edinburgh, and turns back.

The road east through Haltwhistle is the worst of the summer. The inn will not have her because her servants got hay elsewhere, and she sleeps in a cottage open to the thatch. From there she comes down through Hexham to Newcastle, where her horse goes down on its nose on the town's stones, then to Durham, Darlington, Richmond, Leeds and Manchester.

When

summer and autumn 1698

Her own sum

“it was in all above 1551 miles and many of them Long miles”

Counties reached

Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, Berkshire, Middlesex

By way of

Manchester, Northwich, Whitchurch, Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Worcester, Stretton Grandison, Gloucester, Bath, Bristol, Wookey Hole, Wells, Glastonbury, Taunton, Cullompton, Exeter, Chudleigh, Ashburton, Plymouth, Millbrook, Looe, Fowey, St Austell, St Columb Major, Redruth, Hayle, Penzance, Land's End, Truro, Wadebridge, Camelford, Launceston, Okehampton, Topsham, Honiton, Axminster, Dorchester, Blandford Forum, Salisbury, Newton Tony, Winchester, New Alresford, Alton, Farnham, Bagshot, Windsor, London

The way home is the longest stretch of the summer. From Manchester she passes through Northwich, where salt is made, and near Beeston Castle meets the only people in the whole journal she is genuinely afraid of: two men who drop into the road out of a wood, ride one ahead and one behind, and keep shouldering her horse out of the way. She gets clear because the road to Whitchurch is full of people going to market.

Through Shrewsbury, Worcester and Gloucester she comes down to Bath a second time, then to Bristol, into Wookey Hole by candlelight, to Wells and Glastonbury. At Exeter she watches the fulling mills and the dye vats. At Ashburton the best inn is bad. At Plymouth she sees the citadel and the yard.

In Cornwall the roads narrow until only a packhorse fits. At St Austell she eats the first apple pie with custard and clotted cream of her life and never forgets it. Near Tregothnan she decides against going on to the end of the land, because it had rained all night. Next morning she changes her mind.

She reaches Land's End and climbs over the rocks as far as she thinks safe. She drinks good bottled ale there. Then back through Truro, Wadebridge, Camelford and Launceston, into Devon, out at Exeter, down by Honiton and Axminster and home to Newton Tony. From there she still has London to reach, by Winchester and Windsor. At the end she does her sum: above 1,551 miles, and many of them long ones.