Pelotome –
around Croatia on a bicycle.
“We are to-day passing through villages where a bicycle has never been seen and the whole population invariably turns out en masse, clerks, proprietors, and customers in the shops unceremoniously dropping everything and running to the streets ; there is verily a hurrying to and fro of all the citizens ; husbands hastening from magazine to dwelling to inform their wives and families, mothers running to call their children, children their parents, and everybody scampering to call the attention of their sisters, cousins, and aunts, ere we are vanished in the distance, and it be everlastingly too late.”
~ Around The World on a Bicycle – Thomas Stevens (1887).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
June 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, was accompanied by Svetozar Igali, “a noted cycle tourist” in Budapest, crossing into modern day Croatia at Branjin Vrh (then in Hungary) and Osijek – the capital of Slavonia.
Together they pass “through villages where a bicycle has never been seen” to Šarengrad, and onward into modern day Serbia and Belgrade, where Stevens’ journey continued alone towards Iran,
- By Thomas Stevens.
- Published by Sampson, Lowe, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London.
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 Sclavonia (Croatia), along the Danube from Budapest, to Osijek and continuing onward through Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia to 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.
August 1888 – Published 1895.
From the Clyde to The Jordan.
“Narrative of a bicycle journey” was the first illustrated account by a rider of a “modern day bicycle”, and followed Scottish clergyman Hugh Callan – the same author of “Wanderings on Wheel and on Foot Through Europe” – on his ride from Glasgow to Jerusalem, which had previously appeared seven years earlier as a more in depth series of articles in the Glasgow Herald – the Croatian section published on 6th and 12th October, 1888.
Charting the author’s progress on a “Singer” safety bicycle, he enters “Agram” (Zagreb), “the capital (of Croatia),” – then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, – along the “beautiful blue” Sava river from Novo Mesto, Slovenia, and continues on to “Batrina, near the Bosnian frontier,” and “through the lower reaches of the Save country” to Tovarnik, before crossing into Serbia and Belgrade.
- By Hugh Callan.
- Published by Blackie & Son, London.
THROUGH SLAVONIA AND SERVIA.
“Were a man to go suddenly flapping his way through the streets of London on the long-anticipated flying-machine, the average Cockney would scarce betray the unfeigned astonishment that is depicted on the countenances of these Croatian villagers as we ride into their midst and dismount.”
~ Around The World on a Bicycle, Thomas Stevens (1887).