Pelotome –
around Canada on a bicycle.
“Coming down from Quebec to the Vermont border, over poor roads and through a poorer farming section, the farmers everywhere yelled both the French and the English languages indiscriminately at me.
Possibly I deserved to be remonstrated with for being seen on a wheel where none ever ought to have been ridden.”
~ Trips To Hell – George B. Thayer (1924).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
1870
Le Tour du Monde en Vélocipède.
“Around the World by Vélocipède” is the earliest known cycle touring book ever published. Released a year after his charming “Manuel du vélocipède”, this fictional account, written in French – under the nom de plume, Le Grand Jacques – and also serialised in the author’s bi-weekly magazine, Le Vélocipède illustré, it follows an eccentric American millionaire and a “freak show” giantess on their bespoke Vélocipède from Paris to Siberia, crossing Russia into Alaska and Canada, before making their way down through Panama to Cape Horn, sailing on to the Cape of Good Hope and then heading back to Paris through Africa.
- by Le Grand Jacques (Richard Lesclide).
- with illustrations by Felix Regamey.
- published in French by Librairie de la Publication, Paris.
April 1884 – revised and extended in April 1887.
The C.W.A. Guide Book.
The Canadian Wheelmen’s Association‘s guide “containing descriptions of Canadian roads, hotels, consuls, etc., with the constitution, by-laws and racing rules of the association,” was the first North American road book to be released and, among many other route reports, includes the brief account “400 Miles in Northern Ontario” made in August 1883.
- by H.B. Donly and W.E. Tisdale.
- Published by The Canadian Wheelmen’s Association, Simcoe, Ontario, Canada.
Summer 1897 – Published May 1924.
Trips to Hell.
“And other countries” was George Thayer’s 564 page insightful follow-up to his 1886 “Pedal and Path” ride across America. Aged 71 at the time of publication in 1924 – some four years before his death – it followed his many trips around every corner of the globe, mainly taken between 1912 and 1922 on foot, train and boat, however it also includes brief accounts of his bicycle rides in 1888 and 1897 through Britain, Europe and Canada.
He details his bicycle trip “during the summer vacation of the Yale Law School in 1897,” cycling “along the Maine coast, around the Bay of Fundy, up the St. John River, along the shore of Lake Temiscouata, through the magnificent mountain scenery of the Saguenay, back to Quebec and down through the White Mountains, about 1,000 miles the wheel and the rest by train and steamer.”
He also briefly details his journey “in 1916, on the way to Vancouver,” and in May 1922, “from Hartford to Vancouver,” when he “traveled by train five days and was yanked the rest of the way by night in a so called sleeper.”
- By George B. Thayer.
- Published by Case, Lockwood & Brainard, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A.
SHORT HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE CANADIAN WHEELMEN’S ASSOCIATION.
“The first Canadian Road Book in fact the first bicycle road book of the world was published in the Spring of 1884 by order of the Board of Officers and distributed free to all members of the Association.
It was very cordially received not only in this country but in the United States, where the highest enconiums were pronounced upon it by the Cycling Press.”
~ H.B. Donly and W.E. Tisdale ~ “The C.W.A. Guide Book – second edition (1887).