Pelotome –
around Luxembourg on a bicycle.
“Next we made for Luxemburg, a state which has been nicely sliced up and promises before long to disappear. One part of it is now in Elsass-Lothringen, the central part is Dutch, though in character no more suggestive of Holland than Gibraltar is of England another part is Belgian.
The people here must always be in doubt about their nationality, and sigh for the Millenium to come and end the internecine quarrels of kings and cabinets.”
~ Wanderings: On Wheel and On Foot in Europe – Hugh Callan (1887).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
July 1885 – Published October 1887.
Wanderings: On Wheel and On Foot in Europe.
Part Two of Glaswegian Hugh Callan’s book is dedicated to his July 1885 trip “on wheel up the Rhine Valley, from Amsterdam to Geneva, and back by Antwerp,” occupying 23 days, and including a page covering his passing through Luxembourg, from Hettange Grande in France to Arlon in Belgium, via Luxembourg City.
The main subject for the book however is his July 1886, 1,500 mile, 33 day journey “on wheel down Europe from the German ocean to the Aegean Sea”, (Hamburg to Athens) on a Singer “British Challenge” high-wheeler, 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.
THE LAST STAGE HOMEWARDS
“The castled heights of Luxemburg city have held, as their masters, Burgundians, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Austrians, Prussians ; and whoever can hold them in future so as to use them they are by treaty at present abandoned will hold perhaps the most formidable point in Central Europe.
As it is, the solid rock walls, the deep precipitous natural moats, the gardens and terraces, and over all, the frowning forts, without gun or soldier to remind of modern days, form a most striking picture of what a strong city may have been in the days of chivalry.”
~ Wanderings: On Wheel and On Foot in Europe – Hugh Callan (1887).