VANITY FAIR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 140, 16 June 1932, Page 2

VANITY FAIR

THE CORNICHE ROAD Of all the good roads in Europe, it is probable that La Crande Corniche—Which runs from Nice eastwards towards Italy)—is the best l(nown and the most popular. Roads become famous in manp Waps, some bp reason of historical associations, some on account of the heights thep reach, and olheis bp the engineering difficulties .thep have been able to surmount. La Grande Corniche can claim none of these distinctions, ft is compartivelp a modern road, it mounts to little more than seventeen hundred feet, and it cannot boast of anp great achievement in its malting. It passes bp manp towns, but it avoids them all, all save one little forgotten village outside whose walls it sweeps with some disdain. It starts certainlp from Nice, but it goes practicallp nowhere, since long before Mentone is in view it drops into a quite common highwap, and thus incontinentlp ends. It is not even the shortest »aj; from point to point, being, on the conlrarp, the longest. It cannot pretend to be what the Italians call a "master wap," since no road of anp note enters it or leaves it. In so far as it evades all towns it is unlike the usual highwap. It pauses through no cobbled, wandering street; breaks into no quiet fountained square; crosses no market place alive with chattering Nowhere is its coming heralded bp ait avenue of obsequious trees, it forces its U-. through no vaulted gatewap, it lingers bp no village green, it knows not the luscious green of a cultivated field. ... La Crande Corniche Road is now a road devoted to the seeker after pleasure. People traverse it, not with the object of arriving at anp particular destination, but for the delight of the road itself, of the fop it gives to the epe and to the imagination. Il's onlp traffic is what the transport agent would call "holidap traffic”; for when the idle season ends the highwap is deserted. In earlier daps there would rumble along the road the carriage and four of the traveller of great means; then came the humbler Vehicle hired from the town; then the sleek motor; and finallp, as a sign of democratic progress, the char-a-banc, the omnibus, and the motor-brake. _ r> a nr l No visitor to the Riviera of anp self-respect can leave without traversing the Corniche Road. Mark Twain saps that "there are manp sights in the Bermudas, but thep are easily avoided. ,/J' s lar road cannot be avoided. The traveller who returns to his home without having done La Grande Corniche map as well leave Rome without seeing the Forum.—From "The Riviera of the Corniche Road,” bp Sir Frederick Treves.