Travel sometimes starts with a sense of foreboding, but not often with irritation - and hey, we’re talking about France here, so there’s hardly a cause for complaint – it’s just that this trip has me grinding my teeth and scowling. After months of preparation, any semblance of organisation – accommodation, chefs and cyclists to interview, castles and other cultural contacts – has just collapsed around my ears, and expensively at that. The irritation at the failed organisation and lost opportunity, and the fact that I feel hideous after only an hour’s sleep on the ferry*… means that as I arrive in Le Havre I am just angry.
I should explain. I have been working up to this trip for months. The idea is to write a travel story about cycling in France in the trail of the young TE Lawrence, which he did more than a century ago, before he became Lawrence of Arabia. People have a pretty good idea of Lawrence’s exploits during the Arab Uprising in the Middle East in 1916, but most don’t know how he got into it or why he was so suited to the task. See more about the young TE Lawrence.
The trusty steed has been dying for an outing. Here it looks out into the garden in hope…
So this journal – The France 2019 Cycle Journal – is about TE Lawrence and what he did as a young man, specifically his cycle trips. He made at least four cycle trips to France, one of them 2500 miles long. He cycled around like a mad thing, as fast as he could, visiting medieval castles and abbeys and, by the bye, discovering the extraordinary physical abilities which later became so important in his life in the Middle East. We know all this from letters he sent to his family. See more about his cycle journeys.
For myself, I am a travel writer and a regular cyclist, and for about ten years I have been following the young TE Lawrence as a source of travel and adventure – I first came across his youthful exploits in about 2008, when a Canadian academic mentioned that Lawrence had walked for a thousand miles through the Middle East one summer, visiting Crusader castles as research for his university thesis. Blimey, I thought, a student prepared to walk 30 miles a day in 30-40 degree heat on extremely rough roads in unforgiving country (and he was shot at and mugged and left for dead)? But then this was the young Lawrence of Arabia. Since then I have ridden for (hundreds of) miles in pursuit of his cycling adventures.
For the past couple of years I have referred to myself as ‘the travel writer who hasn’t been anywhere’, as the travel part of travel writing, woe, has been a bit thin. Really my job, doing the writing bit at home, is to be on hand for all deliveries and any tradespeople that my dear wife and latterly daughter care to send our way (ASOS, MissGuided, Pretty Little Thing…); and more recently to keep a steady ship, feeding and generally assisting the same daughter through her A Levels. Of course, like most dads, I am taxi driver to the next generation. See more about James Henderson.
Then, one Friday in mid-June 2019, I delivered her to her last exam - Maths 3, I think it was - at 1 pm. By 10.30 that night I was on a ferry to France. And the adventure began…
It’s soon after dawn the next morning and I am about to disembark in Le Havre. And I am still irritated. What more can go wrong? I grump, as I walk my bicycle down the ramp and roll through Le Havre ferry terminal, acres of tarmac that funnel into two tiny official buildings. Perhaps Immigration will unilaterally invoke an early Brexit (this is summer 2019) especially to deny me entry… No - with a quick look they send me on my way. The Gilets Jaunes? Surely they could have a strike planned, or a riot. No, not them either. Or perhaps a lone mortar shell could appear out of the blue, from an as yet unknown group of Norman separatists… I could watch it fly through the air, blatantly avoiding all symbols of French national authority, to seek me out in this huge, empty expanse of tarmac…. No.
Nothing is holding me back, then. I have 80 miles to go and no idea where I will stay tonight, so I had better get on with it… And quit the moaning, you might justifiably suggest, though bear with me…
To be continued…
*I must demur right away on this, as the ferry crossing was the one bit of organisation that worked seamlessly, and in the interests of disclosure I should anyway say that Brittany Ferries assisted this project by offering me a return fare in acknowledgement for a mention in an article I was writing for the Telegraph newspaper. I am happy to acknowledge the ferry company again in the normal way:
James Henderson travelled to Le Havre with Brittany Ferries (Brittany-Ferries.co.uk, 0330 159 7000), who make regular day and overnight crossings (with ensuite cabins) to Le Havre and St Malo, prices from £35 for a bicycle and rider. He had a jolly nice sleep on the return journey, even if the football was a bit of a disaster.