London occurs to the average tourist as the center from which his
travels in the Kingdom will radiate, and this idea, from many points of
view, is logically correct. Around the city cluster innumerable literary
and historic associations, and the points of special interest lying
within easy reach will outnumber those in any section of similar extent
in the entire country. If one purposes to make the tour by rail, London
is pre-eminently the center from which to start and to which one will
return at various times in his travels. All the principal railways lead
to the metropolis. The number of trains arriving and departing each day
greatly exceeds that of any other city in the world, and the longest
through journey in the island may be compassed between sunrise and
sunset.

The motorist, however, finds a different problem confronting him in
making London his center. I had in mind the plan of visiting the famous
places of the city and immediate suburbs with the aid of my car, but it
was speedily abandoned when I found myself confronted by the actual
conditions. One attempt at carrying out this plan settled the matter
for me. The trip which I undertook would probably be one of the first to
occur to almost anybody--the drive to Hampton Court Palace, about twelve
or fifteen miles from the central part of the city. It looked easy to
start about two or three o'clock, spend a couple of hours at Hampton
Court and get back to our hotel by six. After trying out my car--which
had reached London some time ahead of me--a few times in localities
where traffic was not the heaviest, I essayed the trip without any
further knowledge of the streets than I had gained from the maps. I was
accompanied by a nervous friend from Iowa who confessed that he had been
in an automobile but once before. He had ridden with a relative through
a retired section of his native state, traversed for the first time by
an automobile, and he had quit trying to remember how many run-aways and