IF you've ever driven from York down to London on the A1 (M) and M1, you'll know it's a pretty miserable journey. When the motorway isn't jammed solid with traffic (as it invariably is near Nottingham and Leicester) the hard shoulder will be roped off and there will be a 50mph limit that seems to go on for hours. And as for those motorway service stations...

Spare a thought, then, for the poor folk of Georgian and Victorian times, for whom a journey from York to London took not four hours in a warm car, but four days in the back of a jolting, freezing, uncomfortable horse-drawn coach.

From as early as 1698 the Black Swan in Coney Street was advertising itself as the starting-off point for the London coach. An announcement advertising the coach dating from 1706 was found in a drawer in the pub many years later.

"YORK Four Days Stage-Coach," it read.

"All that are desirous to pass from London to York, or from York to London, or any other Place on that Road, let them repair to the Black Swan in Holbourn in London or the Black Swan in Coney-street in York.

"At both which places they may be received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday and Friday which performs the whole Journey in Four Days (if God permits). And sets forth at Five in the Morning..."

We love that 'if God permits'. Imagine Virgin East Coast trying to get away with that these days...

There were no railways in 1706, of course. And no motorways or even metalled roads. What there was was the Great North Road - the ancient coaching route linking the capital with the north of England. It was a route that essentially followed the line of Roman roads such as Ermine Street linking south with North, according to Roger Protz, author of new book Historic Coaching Inns of the Great North Road.

York Press:

Those Roman roads were largely abandoned when the Romans who had made them left. But some remained, pressed into use as footpaths and pilgrimage routes.

By Henry VIII's time, there was a recognisable road running north and south between London, York and the north. Keen to improve the speed at which the post could be delivered, Henry created the role of Master of the Posts. in 1516.

"Soon post boys, in bright and distinctive livery, were hammering up and down the road from London, and basic inns sprang up to accommodate them and enable them to change their horses," Protz writes. Stables were also built to keep the horses, which had to be changed every few miles of the journey.

The regular stagecoach passenger service from London to York and Edinburgh began in 1658. It took four days to reach York, at a cost of £2 - and could take up to five more days to reach Edinburgh, if anyone was brave enough to venture that far.

The passengers who did so needed somewhere comfortable to stay each night. So the small inns designed originally for post boys were extended, Protz writes, while 'new and more palatial ones were built to provide much-needed soft beds, hot water, hearty meals and flowing ale. The great age of the coaching inn was under way.

York Press:

Coaching inns such as the Old White Swan in Goodramgate, York, provided comfortable accommodation after a hard day on the Great North Road

The passengers must have desperately needed those inns at the end of a long, hard, cold day's journey. There's a great description of such a journey in the second chapter of Dickens' A tale of Two Cities. Banker Jarvis Lorry is travelling by mail coach on the Old Dover Road from London to the Kent coast when he and the other passengers have to get out and walk to save the horses. But the account could just as easily have applied to stretches of the Great North Road...

"He walked up the hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise... but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop.

"With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles...Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbone's and over the ears..."

Travel by stagecoach wasn't only cold and uncomfortable: it was dangerous, too. Highway robberies were common.

Even in what is now London itself, you weren't safe, Roger Protz writes in Historic Inns. What is now Holloway Road was, in the days of the great mail coaches, 'a desolate, open area called the hollow Way, a low road filled with rubble and water.

It was also infested with footpads (robbers) who made every effort to stop coaches and rob the passengers, which is why armed guards accompanied the coaches.

York Press:

Dick Turpin's grave in York

The great highwayman Dick Turpin may never have ridden from London to York on Black Bess overnight (that was a Victorian novelist's invention), but the great, slow-moving coaches made tempting targets for men like him. "The robbers were able to flourish as the country was lawless, there was no proper police force and roads were open and woods alongside acted as convenient hiding places."

In the circumstances, reaching one of the great coaching inns at the end of a day's travel must have been hugely comforting, Mr Protz writes. He quotes an old poem often repeated by Dr Johnson: "Who'er has travelled life's dull round, "Where'er his stages may have been, "May sigh to think how oft he found, "The warmest welcome - at an Inn."

Of course, in these days of motorway travel, trains, and inter-city flights, many of those great old coaching inns are long gone.

But a surprising number remain, Mr Protz writes - modified and changed to suit the modern age, but still providing that 'warmest welcome'.

It's those old coaching inns that still remain which his book is really about. They can be found the length of the country, along the route of what used to be the Great North Road. And of course, York having been such an important staging post, there are several that still survive here today - as well as in neighbouring towns and villages.

We highlight some of Mr Protz's favourites below. Checking out a few would be a great way to spend a rainy day...

  • Historic Coaching Inns of the Great North Road by Roger Protz is published by CAMRA Books, priced £12.99

SURVIVING COACHING INNS OF YORKSHIRE

YORK

The Blue Boar, Castlegate

York Press:

The Blue Boar. Photo:  deargdoom57_flickr

This pub's greatest claim to fame, Mr Protz writes, is that the body of Dick Turpin was brought here following his execution in 1739 - though the notorious highwayman isn't actually buried here (he rests in the graveyard of St George's Church off George Street, York). Still, that hasn't stopped tales being told about his ghost being sighted here...

The pub dates from the early 1700s, and has been known as The Blue Boar, The Robin Hood and The Little John. It closed in 2011 but following a campaign by locals reopened a couple of years later, Protz writes. The restored pub has a courtyard that once used to welcome coaches, and inside has wooden floors and booths.

The Golden Fleece, Pavement

York Press:

The Golden Fleece. photo: Roberto Strauss_flickr

Said to be the most haunted pub in York, and possibly the whole country. The ghosts are said to include One-Eyed Jack, who comes dressed in 16th or 17th century clothes and armed with a pistol; a young boy trampled to death by horses outside in the 19th century; and Roman soldiers in the cellars...

The inn dates from 1503, and was originally built on stilts without foundation, Protz writes. It is named after the Merchant Adventurers, who traded in fleeces and whose members drank here. "Entering the Grade 1 listed building is like taking a step back in time. There are wood panels, beams, old settles, gas lamps and a plethora of prints of old York..."

The Old White Swan, Goodramgate

A vast inn that can't be hurried, Protz writes. "Sit in its many bars and soak up a history that dates from the 16th century... The yard itself is where coaches arrived and unloaded and it has a 'mounting stone', a step that enabled passengers to clamber into the coaches."

The Olde Starre, Stonegate

York Press:

Possibly York's oldest licensed inn, The Olde Starre dates from 1644 - as the gallows sign helpfully explains. "The sign was erected in 1733 to attract customers who might otherwise have missed the narrow entrance," Protz writes. "A snickelway leads to a courtyard and gardens with superb views of the Minster."

1644, when the pub opened, was the year that Royalist York was besieged by Parliamentary forces during the Civil War. "The landlord was a staunch royalist and it's believed the name old star was a subtle way of indicating his support for the king," Protz writes. "The parliamentary troops got their own back by using the cellars as a hospital and mortuary."

BOROUGHBRIDGE

The Black Bull, St James Square

The Bull, which dates from 1257, is a delight, Protz writes. "From the square it looks like a small community pub but if you turn the corner into the side street you find it stretches for some distance. The Grade II listed building was clearly a substantial coaching inn in the 18th and 19th centuries. As you enter from the square you find yourself in a warm and comfortable pub wit wood panels, a snug and main bar, a vast inglenook, beamed ceilings, settles and several nooks and crannies..."

THIRSK

The Golden Fleece, Market Place

This was an important coaching stop on the Great North Road between York and Darlington, Protz writes. "There are more rooms than you can wave a riding crop at, including a Writing Room - I wonder if Dickens ever made use of it? - and the Richmond Room. There are open fires, big settles and heavy beams, while some of the 27 guest rooms offer four-poster beds."