Motoring.
Spring on the Roads of the World
FOR a thousand adventurous families next week is one of the most important of the whole year, for at the end of it the cars that have been laid up since the end of September or December will be given a new licence for the road and the best of the year will begin. There is no knowing what sort of a spring we are in for, whether of the traditional type, all smiles and tears and—to judge by the stories—comparatively warm ; of the worst type, all frost and cast wind ; or of the average type, a stimu- lating mixture of all three • but to the enthusiastic driver there are only two kinds of weather, fog and snow, that have the power to dim ever so slightly the brightness of that great moment. For long weeks he has been looking forward to that part of the year called April. It is the most attractive name of the twelve, suggesting freedom from all kinds of tyranny, the death of winter; the arrival of long days and real daylight, but whether the suggestion proves baseless or not is of very small importance. It is one of the very few official dates that mean something real. From the first of April until summer is over his car's existence is justified. It becomes the most important person in his household.
Next week is or should be the buSiest of them all. Quite obviously every good car is bought with the purpose of touring on as large a scale as possible. It is probable that this fact is concealed at the time of choice and buying, but it is never for an instant forgotten by the principal people concerned, least of all at the end of March. You may maintain, in public and the face of fact, that you are only licensing the car again for week-end runs and to save time and train-fares, but you know very well that at the back of your mind there is a picture of the open road somewhere altogether different from your daily surroundings, somewhere like the somewhere you read of in tales of high adventure. It may run through the Scottish highlands, by the Italian lakes, that road ; over the jealous passes of the Pyrenees, by the banks of the_Slutrukon,in the, aisles.of the Black Forest or along the swift Danube, anywhere. You may perhaps have never been on the road to Budapest, it may never have occurred to you to cross the Irish Sea or to, climb up to Carter Bar from Otterburn and look out from that splendid solitude upon the kingdom of Scotland as if it were a map come alive. It is all one. Everybody has his private dream of happiness and your road to Somewhere is naturally the only one. In the end you may get only as far as Romney Marsh or AngleSey, but you will carry with you the picture of the road as it really looks to you. The point is that you are, and always will be an explorer, in spite of yourself.
Be wise and take that for granted. If it does not happen- all., at once -it probably. will sooner than you hope, and you must not be caught unready for the greatest adventure life has to offer. It may be Rome, it may be -Edinburgh. For either your car must be fit, or you will miss. iinguessed-at joys. And high among these you must count the days of loving preparation Which begin, say, tomorrow. . - If your car, the inspiration as much as the companion of your -certain adventure, has lain idle for months in the murk of a British winter there is much to do- or if, in the eyes of a pedant, there is not, you will easily invent it. Some things cannot be imagined, even by that inexplicably lucky individual, the man who never worries and consequently never has any reason to. Take thought, for example, about your tires. If they have already done a respectable mileage and are within measurable distance of occasional failure, through deep cuts or those betraying patches of white in the tread, make up your mind to buy this week the new ones you know you will have to get before the end of the summer, and ensure yourself peace of mind just when you will stand in greatest need of it. When you are back I from Vienna or Cadiz, Shanklin or Cape Wrath, you will be ready to drive along your fluniliar- roads with covers that may -let you down at any moment. Those roads are not found in your dream and delays do not matter as they do when you are sighting the Cevenne§ for the first time. Tires last astonishingly long in these comfortable days and your old ones will take no harm from being given a rest in the dark for six months.
Take thought, too, for the mechanical side, no matter how fit you keep your car. Be quite certain that your brake-linings will not need renewal until it, is time to come home again.. Think of long descents of mountain passes, the pedal on at every hairpin berid • of sheep and deer and ponies disporting .themselves about the roads that so clearly belong to them, without a second glance at the car that is so anxious to avoid hitting them; of the unlighted cyclist and the farm-waggon with ten feet of timber sticking out invisibly -over the tail; of the spring. evenings when the road, a vague trail under the dusk, grows beautiful as you never knew it. See very carefully to those brake-linings, not forgetting the controls. Be sure that there is plenty -of take-up left, so that you will not waste a single golden hour of spring-time on the road in having to shorten cables or lengthen threads when you should like Mowgli, be fully occupied with new smells, new sounds and new colours. Nothing must interfere with your spring running. Go on with the labour, of love and see to- it that the sparking-plugs are good for another 5,000 miles' work and, if they are, take them to pieces and clean them properly, leaving . the points adjusted with the greatest nicety. If they are not, buy new ones and the, best of their kind. Plug failure is the least excusable as it is the most irritating of minor worries, and a great deal of the poor and extravagant running of the average hard-worked car is directly due to weak firing. It is of the highest importance that your car should run at its best when you take it out for the first time in the young year. You do not need to be reminded to start this superb month with a clean engine, well and truly decarbonized, with valves polished and timed as the maker intended them to be, 'nor to see to the level and condition of the oil in gear-box and back axle. In the incommunicable joy of doing things properly, you will remember these as naturally as you will change the oil in the sump and verify the state of the battery, but you might forget quite a number .of the grease-points about the chassis. There are 32 on mine, and for the past;. year I have wholly abandoned the pretence of attending to them. I pay three shillings to the nearest service station with a high- pressure greasing plant and watch other people doing a loathsome job as(' never succeeded in doing it myself. It is so well done that the car runs in strange silence, all sorts of unaccountable noises to which I have for years been broken, disappearing as by enchantment. Truly the power of a drop of oil in the right place is immeasurable. Do your doors or windows *tittle ? Allow time for them to be dealt with so that you take the open road with ears at rest. You will have to do it sooner or later, but this is the right time. It is also the right time for scouring the radiator (you have- not forgotten the 'high blue moun- tains that lie across the road of your dreams ?) checking the condition, of the distributor or magneto and making quite sure that the right straps' for the luggage are in the car in a place where they are reasonably safe from the thieving fingers of your nearest and dearest.
And where will you compel your dream to come true On which special road is spring best met ? A futile question. _Practically any, road anywhere is, at least momentarily, the right One. I like to think that I shall once more discover the turn of the year in the pine-woods of Gascony, along that enormous road that runs for 100 miles in utter peace between the purple trunks ; surprise the first real green in the Bog of Allan, in Kerry or in Connemara; the first fleet of those dazzling white cloud-ships that sail in April over the Yorkshire moors. On the empty road between Barras and Reeth, by Arkengarthdale for choice, spring comes blithely, as it does on Loch Linnhe and in the Chiltern woods. It does not really matter on what sort of road you begin your driving year in spring, high or low, rough or smooth. See to it that St. Christopher is in his place on your dash- board and goforeirwithout athought. --.3VTIN-INtroLE-Au.
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