Pelotome –
around Austria on a bicycle.
“We hear not a little about the grand uses Prussia and Austria and France are going to make of the bicycle. The wonder to me is where they are going to get reliable bicyclists. One thing is sure, they will never excel in the sport either in Prussia or Austria, nor ever succeed in establishing a bicycling military corps till they mend their roads ; or if they do succeed, there will be, as at present, bicyclists, but who do not bicycle.”
~ Wanderings: On Wheel and On Foot in Europe – Hugh Callan (1887).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
1874 – published in 1875
Paris to Vienna by Bicycle.
In this 32 page book, W. Saunders recounts Frenchman M. A. Laumaillé’s notable 760 mile, 12 day journey of October 1874, “the longest bicycle tour on record”, from the French to the Austrian capital on an English machine. The journey, “of upwards of 760 miles in spite of bad roads, disgraceful treatment by villagers, heavy rains, and many other discouragements” was also wildly reported in international medical journals at the time, due to Laumaille’s invention of a natural tonic made from liqueur de cocoa, which “supported him and gave him strength.”
- by W. Saunders.
- Published by Tinsley Brothers, London.
- image, left, proved by University of Bristol Library.
July 1886 – Published October 1887.
Wanderings: On Wheel and On Foot in Europe.
Setting out from Glasgow on the 3rd July, 1886, to catch the steamer to Hamburg, Hugh Callan details his 1,500 mile, high-wheeler, 33 day journey “on wheel down Europe from the German ocean to the Aegean Sea”, entering Austria at Gmünd on the Czech border, before visiting Vienna and cycling along the Dabube to Hainburg an der Donau, and onward to Budapest and Athens, Greece.
The second part of the book is dedicated to his earlier July 1885 trip “on wheel up the Rhine Valley, from Amsterdam to Geneva, and back by Antwerp,” while Part Three follows his six week walking tour “‘on the tramp’ in Belgium and France,” in 1881.
- By Hugh Callan.
- Published by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, London.
May 1885 – Published 1887.
Around the World on a Bicycle.
“From San Francisco to Teheran” was the first illustrated volume of 29 year old English immigrant Tom Steven’s pioneering ride around the globe. The book covers the first half of the novice rider’s journey on his fifty-inch Pope “Columbia” high-wheeler, with a handlebar bag containing socks, a spare shirt, a raincoat that doubled as a tent and bedroll, and a pocket revolver.
Leaving California, on 22nd April, 1884, he became the first cyclist to cross the United States in the process, sailing from New York to Liverpool, and continuing his journey in May 1885 through Europe, arriving in Austria at Altheim, from Simbach am Inn in Bavaria.
Cycling through Lambach, “up among the hills” to Strengberg, and along the Danube to Melk, and Neulengbach, before climbing “over rough, lumpy roads, toward Vienna”, he continued on from the Austrian capital “through the waving barley-fields of the Danube bottom to Schwechat”, Petronell, and Hainburg an der Donau, pushing forward to Presburg (today, Bratislava in Slovakia), on his journey towards Iran,
- By Thomas Stevens.
- Published by Sampson, Lowe, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London.
WANDERINGS ON WHEEL AND ON FOOT
“The wheel is considerably in vogue in Austria proper…
Heroes as they were, they made fun of my folly in wearing such heavy clothes and dragging half-a-dozen kilogrammes of baggage behind me.
On being quietly informed that the heavy knapsack had the effect of converting my ordinary bicycle into a ‘safety,’ and that most of the places on my route, especially in Turkey (the word Turkey was an eye-opener to them), had no railway station, they began to think that after all ‘there was method in my madness’.”
~ Wanderings on Wheel and on Foot, Hugh Callan (1887).