Pelotome –
around Czechia on a bicycle.
“I lit a match, and read half-past ten on my watch. What was that dull glitter not far ahead ? It was not wolves, but the wire fence that divides two great empires. On a rough stone near it I deciphered, by my fingers, on one side the word SACHSEN (Saxony), on the other BOEHMEN (Bohemia).
The fence was about ten feet high, and in a tumble-down condition ; the gate, through which I passed, a child could open. Surely no frontier could be crossed with less bother, as far as the actual barrier is concerned, than this.”
~ Wanderings: On Wheel and On Foot in Europe – Hugh Callan (1887).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
July 1886 – Published October 1887.
Wanderings: On Wheel and On Foot in Europe.
Setting out from Glasgow on the 3rd July, 1886, and catching 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”, passing from Dresden, through Saxon-Bohemian Switzerland, Děčín. Ústí nad Labem, the Krušné Mountains, Lovosice, Prague, Nespeky, and Benešov, before crossing today’s Austrian border at Gmünd, on his way to 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.
WANDERINGS ON WHEEL AND ON FOOT
“The roads for thirty miles around Prague, north and south, were the best I had yet ridden ; though hilly, their surface is hard and kept in excellent condition. Prague itself is probably the most remarkably situated city in Europe.”
~ Wanderings on Wheel and on Foot, Hugh Callan (1887).