Great North Road (Great Britain)
The Great North Road was a coaching route used by mail coaches between London, York and Edinburgh. The modern A1 mainly follows the Great North Road. The inns on the road, many of which survive, were staging posts on the coach routes, providing accommodation, stabling for the horses and replacement mounts. However, virtually none of the surviving coaching inns can be seen while driving on the A1, because the modern route now bypasses the towns in which the inns are to be found.
A traditional starting point of the Great North Road was Smithfield Market in Clerkenwell, London.
Read more about Great North Road (Great Britain): Route, Cultural References
Famous quotes containing the words north and/or road:
“The North will at least preserve your flesh for you; Northerners are pale for good and all. There’s very little difference between a dead Swede and a young man who’s had a bad night. But the Colonial is full of maggots the day after he gets off the boat.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)
“Telephone poles were matchsticks, put there to be snapped off at a whim. Dogs trotting across the road were suddenly big trucks. Old ladies turned into moving—vans. Everything was too bright, but very funny and made for my delight. And about half a mile from my long liquid breakfast I turned carefully down a side street and parked, and sat beaming happily through the tannic fog for about an hour, remembering how witty we all had been, how handsome and talented ... [ellipsis in original]”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)