TE Lawrence in france 1906 and 1907
In the summers of 1906 and 1907, the young TE Lawrence took the ferry across to north-western France during his holidays. He cycled all over the region, but he was also following his interest in medieval history, visiting castles, abbeys and cathedrals along the way. This would become important to his university thesis just a few years later. In 1907 he carried his father’s camera and he took a number of photographs of the castles and churches.
He based himself in Dinard, a burgeoning holiday town in Brittany, across the estuary from St Malo. Dinard had a large English population and in fact the Lawrence family had lived there from 1891-94, and there were family friends called Chaignon with whom he stayed some of the time.
In 1906, aged nearly 18, he travelled via St Malo to Dinard with a family from Oxford before staying with the Chaignons. He was joined by his school friend CFC Beeson, nicknamed Scroggs, and the pair made a number of cycle trips together, east to Mt St Michel and west to the Norman castles and churches of Lannion, Paimpol, Treguier and Lamballe.
Already on his 1907 trip, you can feel his growing sense of adventure. He was cycling longer distances and going further on his own. He crossed the channel with his father, arriving in Le Havre and heading east along the Seine before doubling back through Normandy, via Chateau Gaillard (pictured above), Evreux and Falaise to Coutances. There his father left him for Jersey, where Lawrence’s mother was staying, while the young TE Lawrence took off south on his longest independent ride to date, some 400 miles heading south-east to Le Mans, south to the Loire River at Saumur, west to Angers and then back to the north coast via Rennes. After this he returned to some of the castles he had visited in 1906, in order to take photographs.
He records his cycling trips in his letters. It is interesting to note that his rides became more rigorous and demanding between 1906 and 1907, and in his letters you can feel the expanding sense of adventure in his requests to ride overnight to Mont St Michel and to cover longer distances on his own. In 1908, then a student in his summer holidays, he became even more adventurous and cycled some 2500 miles, or 4000 kilometres, around the whole of France. See more about his 1908 cycle journey through the whole of France.
Normandy, Brittany and the Loire, June 2019
In June 2019, I set off in the trail of the cycle journeys made by the young TE Lawrence through Normandy, Brittany and the Loire in the summers of 1906 and 1907. See more detail of his journeys below.
I took the ferry to Le Havre in Normandy, as Lawrence did in 1907 and followed his trail to the town of Lillebonne and the castles of Gisors and Chateau Gaillard. Next I cycled south and west to Chambois and Falaise, before heading west into Brittany and to St Malo.
Here I picked up his 1906 trip (he came across the Channel to St Malo), heading west of Dinard and cycling in a large butterfly shape (with its centre point around the town of Lamballe. For part of this time I was researching an article of the Telegraph newspaper in London, a cycle holiday offered by Headwater. Their Backroads of Brittany tour starts near Lamballe, heads north to the coast, via several holiday towns, eventually to Dinard. From there it travels inland along the Rance River to the lovely Dinan and then west back to Lamballe.
After this I took up the Loire section of his 1907 trip again, cycling south-east to Le Mans and then down to the Loire Valley, to the town of Saumur. From there I returned to St Malo and travelled back on the ferry to Portsmouth like the young TE Lawrence.
I recorded this trip in my Journal at France 2019. A map showing the route I followed is below.
France 2019
