Five Thousand Kilometres Through France

In the trail of the Young Lawrence of Arabia

TE Lawrence - His Cycle Journeys

Already as a boy, at the encouragement of his father, TE Lawrence was making long cycle rides around the English countryside. In the summer of 1906, as he turned 18, he began to explore further afield, riding around Brittany from Dinard on the northern coast of France, sometimes with his friend CF Beeson, nick-named Scroggs. His aim in these rides was to visit the medieval castles, cathedrals and abbeys of Brittany. See more about his trips to France in 1906 and 1907.

In the Easter holidays of 1907 he undertook a long ride around Wales, again to look at castles and abbeys. See more about his trip to Wales. And then over that summer he undertook another journey to France, through Normandy (accompanied by his father up to this point), then down to the Loire Valley and back up to Dinard in Brittany. From there he made a number of trips to see castles he had visited the previous year, this time photographing any of which there were no good postcards.

In 1908, in the summer holidays between his first and second year at university, aged nearly 20, Lawrence set off on an extraordinary journey of some 2500 miles all around France. He covered the distance in 50 days, visiting more than 50 medieval castles.

He was collecting information, making sketches and sometimes taking photographs of castles, abbeys and other medieval fortifications. What had initially been a boyhood interest had been sharpened into research for his undergraduate thesis. He would also collect and often send postcards, again as a record for his research. See more about his 2500 mile trip through France in 1908. He made one further cycle trip to France, in the autumn of 1910, after he had left university and before he went Syria.

It’s worth adding that in the summer of 1909, between his second and third year at university, he walked for an extraordinary 1000 miles through what is now Lebanon, Syria and Israel, this time looking at the crusader castles. Over a period of three months, often in 40 degree heat, he covered as many as 30 miles a day, on unmade roads and in extremely unforgiving country. He was shot at and mugged, but this journey gave birth to his love for the region. He arrived back in Oxford three weeks late for his university term.

His cycle journeys are recorded in his letters home, which he would often write on Sundays (he had been brought up in a religious family). In his letters Lawrence comments quite regularly on his cycling, from the punctures he repaired to his ability to cover long distances. See more about Young Lawrence the Cyclist.