The twenty-two miles between Preston and Lancaster are more remarkable for the excellence of the road than for the interest of the way. When you have achieved the pull-up past Gallows Hill—or what was once known by that name—where numbers of the rebels of 1715 expiated their error of judgment, and have come to where the tramways cease, the road becomes undulating, and is neighboured, first on one side and then on the other, by the railway and the Lancaster Canal. At Hollowforth what looks like an ancient gateway was built in 1853 from the stones of an old obelisk formerly standing in Preston market-place. The little river Wyre is twice crossed, at Brock’s Bridge and Garstang. At Myerscough, where the pull-up was formerly very trying for horses, the inscription may be read:

To relieve the sufferings
Of animals labouring in our service
The steep ascent of this hill
Was lowered
At the expense of Mary and Margaret Cross
of Myerscough,
A.D. 1869.
This deed of mercy appeals to every
Passer-by, that he too show Mercy to
The creatures God has put under his hand

Garstang, that stands rather finely on the road, with its old “Royal Oak” inn and ancient market-cross, hinting, not remotely to those who care for these things, of better days, was in fact once a market-town. But Garstang has outlived its ancient importance. Time was when it owned a Mayor and Corporation, who proudly dated back to 1314. Even in 1680 it was sufficiently important to win a renewal of its ancient charter of incorporation, but it has long lost any relics of its old state. The interfering besoms of the Local Government Board swept away the Mayor and his subordinates in 1883, and presented Garstang instead with a nice new Town Trust. It all sounds very improving and wonderful, but the plain man suspects only the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee in all this; with, of course, the inevitable legal charges for making the wonderful change.

In the days when Garstang did a large cattle trade, that singular seventeenth-century character, Richard Braithwaite, who styled himself “Drunken Barnaby,” came staggering through, with his usual skinful, on his way from Lancaster.

There are two jokes belonging to Garstang. One is the parish church, situated a mile and a half away, in a lonely situation, and the other is the railway that here crosses the road. To-day, those of the inhabitants upon whose hands time hangs heavily haunt the street with fell intent to inflict the Great Railway Joke upon the unsuspecting stranger who, maybe, halts to examine the cross. They fix him, as did the Ancient Mariner the Wedding Guest, with their glittering, or rheumy, eye, as the case may be, and with hoarse voice and pointing finger ask him if he sees that railway. Assured that he does, comes then the answer, with weird chuckles: “the longest railway in England, the ‘Garstang and Not End.’” Now the “Garstang and Knott End Railway” is probably the very shortest, being not quite seven miles in length: hence this stupendous funniment. Where it does end, however, is at Pilling. Some day, when the long-projected five-miles’ extension to Fleetwood, and a junction with the railway there, is accomplished, the joke will be extinct and the humour of Garstang dowsed in blackest night.

Beyond Garstang, the Bleasdale Fells appear, away to the right. The old importance of the road, before the railway that now runs so swift and frequent a service, is seen in the various inns on the way. There are the “New Holly,” “Middle Holly,” and “Old Holly,” or “Hamilton Arms,” inns. The “New Holly,” at Forton, replaces an older house of the same name, still standing, at Hollins Hill, on the left, on the old road that went out of use in 1825. Even the wayside “Bay Horse” railway station takes its name from an inn that was once a change-house for the coaches. In 1825 the “Bay Horse” inn was closed, and re-opened in 1892.

Galgate and Scotforth demand no notice, except that the former is thought to have obtained its name from “Gael-gaet,” a passage for the Gaels, or Scots, and that the name of Scotforth carries a similar meaning. For we are come now within hail of the land that was in the old times always seething in Border raids: the district that Lancaster Castle, at the easy passage of the Lune, was built to defend.