In the Trail the Young Lawrence of Arabia
 

As a youth and student, TE Lawrence, later Lawrence of Arabia, cycled for thousands of miles around southern England, Wales and then France. He loved the independence of exploring by bicycle and enjoyed pushing himself physically. His sense of adventure and the self-reliance and particularly the physical resilience he developed during these cycle journeys are key to understanding the man he later became. See more about the Young Lawrence.

This project - In the Trail of the Young Lawrence of Arabia - is a contemporary piece of travel writing that takes inspiration from the cycle journeys made by the young TE Lawrence a century ago. It is written by travel writer and endurance sportsman James Henderson, who uses TE Lawrence’s letters home from 1906-8 as a lens to recreate the journeys and to view again the places he visited.

the 2019 Cycle Journeys

James Henderson made two cycle journeys in 2019, first around Wales, in late April and early May (where, unfeasibly, he was rained on only once in eight days). This was to follow a trip undertaken by TE Lawrence in his Easter holidays in 1907.

The second journey, in June and July 2019, was around north-western France, where TE Lawrence cycled in the summer holidays of 1906 - he spent a month riding around Brittany - and 1907, when he cycled through Normandy, down to the Loire and then spent more time in Brittany, often photographing places he had visited in 1906. He made these trips sometimes alone, often with a school-friend and for a short time with his father.

James Henderson’s third journey, to be undertaken in 2020, follows the trip made by the young TE Lawrence in the summer of 1908, during the vacation between his first and second year at university. It was an extraordinary trip, around 4000 kilometres long, covering much of France.

About the young TE Lawrence

Born in August 1888, TE Lawrence was the second of five boys born to Sir Thomas Chapman and Sarah Lawrence. He was born in Tremadoc in north Wales, but his parents moved several times in the following years, to Scotland, France and the New Forest. The family settled in Oxford in 1896.

At the encouragement of his father, the boy TE Lawrence took up cycling and photography, two hobbies that became useful when he attended Jesus College at Oxford University to study History in 1907-10. In order to research a thesis comparing medieval and Crusader castles, he cycled thousands of miles through France and walked for hundreds of miles in what is now Syria, Lebanon and Israel. He borrowed his father’s camera and took photographs of many of the castles he was studying in France. He took a smaller camera during his walk in the Middle East (which was stolen). However, this introduction to the region led to his becoming an archaeologist in the Middle East in 1910 and ultimately to his being drawn into Military Intelligence in 1914 and the Arab Uprising in 1916. Read more about the young TE Lawrence.

A Life of Adventure

This site, A Life of Adventure.net, is all about… well, adventure, something that was written into TE Lawrence’s very make-up. He travelled and explored from an early age. Read about some other adventurers from a more modern age.

Training Journal

And you thought your training was hard... Read the Fat-knacker's Repose, the story of the calamities and mis-adventures of James Henderson's training regime in A Life of Adventure's Training Journal...  His recent entry is My Crampons for  a Pillow...

Some more adventures to consider...

About A Life of Adventure

A Life of Adventure is about participatory sport and adventure – races, rides, expeditions, events, training for them, preparing, participating and competing. We don’t usually do mountaineering or professional sport, nor machines, either - instead it’s about the things that will inspire YOU to get out there and get active.

It’s about motivation, training and swapping advice, and it’ll give you the view from the ground, the grunt and graft during participation. And let’s not forget our adventurous ancestors, so there are historic stories about adventurers too.

A Life of Adventure was almost named Adventure, Adventure, Adventure… in a play on Location, Location, Location… Basically it’s the antidote to nesting. So if you are happiest when working your body hard in an exotic location and you feel a small ache of dissatisfaction at our daily diet of stories about rather badly behaved professional footballers, if you feel an urge, to get out there and do something intensely physical, then this site will have lots of ideas for you.

To find out more about James Henderson, the main writer at A Life of Adventure, see here...