In addition to the phantom horse drawn coaches mentioned in ‘Haunted Highways’, another example comes to us from Leyburn and associated with the naming of the Post Horn Café, a charming tea & coffee house overlooking the cobbled square and serving amongst the delights of a hearty full English breakfast Theakston’s Old Peculier Ale steak pie.
The present road running between Bedale and Leyburn has always been an important route (the section en route running through Crakehall known as the ‘Kings Street’ and passing the Plague Cross mentioned in ‘Silent Stones’). With road improvements in the nineteenth century, by 1839 coaches were running from Bedale to Leyburn, Leeds, Richmond, York, Masham, Northallerton, Middleham, Barnard Castle and Ripon.
The Leyburn coach, the legacy of which is echoed in the Post Horn’s name departed from the Golden Lion Inn, while the Wensleydale Royal Mail Coach Service drawn by two pairs of horses provided the long-distance traveller with a route from Northallerton to Kendal, passing through Bedale, Middleham, Leyburn, Hawes and Sedbergh carrying both goods as well as passengers. Perhaps the improved state of today’s roads provides a more comfortable ride for the phantom coach as in 1844 the Wensleydale Advertiser described the journey as:
“On the rough roads it was a ghastly journey, and cushions of a very soft substance should be used on outside seats, as one individual sustained external injuries from the velocity with which the coach was driven on to the pavement at Hawes – the pavement, not the driver, being at fault.”