Is there an easy way to have Tapestry auto-load or auto-request the start
page when the core Tapestry servlet loads up?

The first page to load when we restart Tapestry takes over 10seconds (mostly
because of Hibernate and number of linked pages), which we only get to when
making the first request from a browser. A way to automate the first
request would be very useful, because it places the time cost outside of
user interaction.

Szemere