To fuel my dreams of biking, I've been reading about the European biking tours of Roy Jenkin and his daughter Nina Jenkin's tour 50 years later. (via Cabinet magazine)
In 1953 Roy Jenkin, a 21 year-old student from Exeter, cycled around France, Switzerland and Germany with his schoolfriend Gordon Newbery. They covered 2,286 miles, slept in potting sheds, hay barns, and even a railway marshalling yard, and the whole trip cost them £24 15s. His diary and this website, describes the long-gone Europe of horse carts, cobbles and old fashioned hospitality, a continent which was still recovering from six years of war.
This summer - fifty years on - Roy's daughter Nina retraced her father's route. Life on the road was very different for her than it was for Roy - she had a modern bicycle with plenty of gears, and she visited web cafes and e-mailed despatches home instead of posting letters - but she still had to average 55 miles a day, feed herself, and find a place to stay. Roy died of cancer when Nina was eight, and so this trip was also more than a mere cycling holiday - it was a chance to learn more about her father, of whom her memories are limited. Nina, together with her friend Simon, covered 2,432 miles in the end, and had many adventures along the way - read the rest of the site to find out what happened!
Also: take the Minimalist Quiz. I got 92% correct but was fooled by the Walmart bookshelves.
1 comment:
In the UK, they recommend you lock your bike in London with two different types of lock e.g. padlock & chain, and D-lock. This is because the cycle stealers rarely have more than one type of lock remover with them... ~x~
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