It was wartime in England. London was being bombed by the Nazis. Coventry Cathedral was a smoke-filled ruin and a sense of desperation gripped the island kingdom. Yet even though the Second World War was raging all around him, the English country squire J. Wentworth Day decided the time was right for an extended horseback ride through his disaster-torn country! Setting off on his Thoroughbred, Robert, Day began the only wartime ride of its kind, a rural odyssey that took him through Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridge, Norfolk and Suffolk. The equestrian journey gave the author a glimpse into the living picture of a mediaeval portion of England which, until 1939, had hardly changed for centuries. Day takes the reader into the countryside and delivers one surprise after another. For while the eastern coast was being ravaged by warfare, the gentleman farmer discovered an inland oasis of mellow harvest fields, birds and badgers, autumn sunshine, moated Tudor farmhouses, peaceful country halls, and fishing villages, all populated by shrewd farmers or slow-talking fisher folk. Amply illustrated with photographs, "Wartime Ride" manages to put into words the charm of a countryside struggling for its very existence.