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Journal of the T. E. Lawrence Society 
ISSN 0963-1747

Vol. I, No. 1, Spring 1991

Edited by Jeremy Wilson

Eleven Hundred Miles on the Lawrence Trail 
Retracing Lawrence's French cycling tour of 1908
Nicholas Lynch

I wheeled the bicycle off the D126 and on to the roadside verge to admire the view. Below, the ox-bow bend of the Seine curved away towards the town of Les Andelys. Above the town, just visible through the haze, were the ruins of Château Gaillard.

I was on the second day of retracing part of the route which T. E. Lawrence had taken for his 1908 'Crusader Castle' tour of France. My goal was Carcassonne, over a thousand miles of cycling away, and I was already a few hours behind schedule.

The two 'Crusader Castle' journeys of 1908 and 1909 confirmed for Lawrence that his destiny lay in the east. The 1908 journey was more than just a lengthier version of his previous cycling holidays; it  inspired in him strong feelings for the lands of the east and an eagerness to see them.

I had thought of doing the whole 1908 route by car, speeding up Lawrence's two-and-a-half-month journey and only taking a month to do the 2,300 miles. After asking long-standing members of the Society, it seemed that many people had thought about cycling over the route but none actually had. So I decided to follow as much of his route by bicycle as my leave from work would allow. In this way I would be following the same itinerary as Lawrence, seeing the same places, getting an idea of his stamina and, hopefully, a better understanding of his character.

I was eleven years older than Lawrence was when he made the journey, so I wouldn't be as able on a bike, but I had cycling technology on my side to balance things up. Also the roads are much better now than they were then, which probably tipped the balance in my favour.

I realised early on that there would be limits as to how faithful my re-creation could be, but I was prepared to accept some inaccuracies. There are one or two places on Lawrence's route (which he marked on a map now in the Bodleian Library) where the roads appear to have changed, so I had to plan a different route. It was easy to take the re-creation of the journey to extremes; I was most disappointed when I found that I would have to set off two days earlier than Lawrence did because, to get back from Carcassonne, I would have to catch a train that only ran once a week.

I finally arrived at Le Havre on the night ferry from Portsmouth. Cyclists and motor-bikes usually leave the ferry first and it was quite strange cycling on my own through sleepy Le Havre, wondering  if in three weeks' time I would have reached the Mediterranean.

Lillebonne was the first place of interest on the route. When Lawrence came through they were about to perform Racine's Britannicus at the Roman theatre there. 'I would have liked to have heard that', he wrote. But there was little sign of activity when I went to see it; even the multilingual machine giving a potted history of the theatre was out of action. By lunchtime the sun was blazing down from a cloudless sky pushing the temperature up into the high seventies, and I began to think that I'd be burnt to a crisp before I was halfway to the Mediterranean. I stayed the first night in Rouen, having covered what I thought was a useful 90 km. (55 miles) that day. Lawrence had carried on another 35 km. to Les Andelys, but I planned to catch him up again at Gisors.

On that second morning I cycled out of Rouen through Boos, reaching the view of Les Andelys by 11 a.m. I had realised early on that there would only be a limited time for sightseeing, so I rejoined the D126 and rode down the hill to the town, pushing the bike up the steep slope to Château Gaillard.

Lawrence's photographs which illustrate Crusader Castles were also of interest to me. I walked round the castle with copies of his photographs in my hand and, as well as I could, re-took them. The ruins have changed remarkably little in the intervening eighty-two years. The only difference in the keep is the removal of a handrail which led up to the entrance door. 

Using a 35mm SLR camera makes photography a much quicker process than it was in Lawrence's time. When he photographed here in 1907 he claimed to have spent from 6a.m. to 7p.m. taking just ten photographs. The small size of a modern negative cannot reproduce the detail that an old-fashioned plate negative could.  This is quite apparent in the results!

Then, in the afternoon, I continued on to Gisors where the keep looks complete, but there are too many flowerbeds inside the outer walls to give much impression of military strength. The following morning at 11 o'clock I left for Compiègne. When the road neared Beauvais I had to decide whether to carry on or turn east as Lawrence had been forced to do due to 'head winds and most furious storms of rain and hail'. Well, the weather was much kinder to me, and Lawrence had 
been there before in 1907 and again in 1910, so I headed on in to see the cathedral.

I sat on the grass in the cathedral square and stared up at the masses of masonry. Lawrence wrote to Vyvyan Richards in 1907: 'Do come and have a look at it; it is the sort of place that can never be forgotten - or imagined'.

Inside, I found the place where Lawrence took the photograph which appears in Home Letters. It is right at the back of the nave and involves standing on one of the pews and bracing the camera against a pillar. Apart from the converging verticals, my result seems to have been worth the effort. I stayed until 3p.m. then pushed hard for Compiègne along the E46-N31.

The teams of bilious white oxen which Lawrence saw pulling small loads of straw have been replaced by lorries and juggernauts, stirring up the dust. The scene isn't quite as pastoral somehow. Lawrence also mentions the dogs: 'The high roads are infested with dogs whose duty it is to bark at all tourists, above all motorists and people in knickers.' 

The same is true today; every Frenchman seems to have at least one dog, and these hounds apparently look on cyclists as tasty additions to their diet. There were many times when I was glad to have a fence between them and me.

The next day I rode through forested roads to the castle of Pierrefonds. Completely restored by Viollet-le-Duc, it has something of a Disneyworld feel to it. All the features which Lawrence describes are readily identifiable. The fifteen-foot dragon forms the bottom of a waterspout whose mouth guides water into a drain.

Coucy le Château was next on the route and dates from about 1230. Lawrence was impressed by it and wrote, 'This was even better than Pierrefonds:- for one thing it is 13th cent. - another its 
keep is 200 feet high and there are splendid remains of four other towers.' The keep which Lawrence describes surviving the gunpowder of Mazarin, fell to the explosives of the first World War, and its stones now form a large pile of rubble. The thickness of the remaining walls, however, conveys a feeling of solidity which makes Gaillard look slightly feeble by comparison.

T.E. came to Coucy with his brother Frank in 1910, and Frank's letters from the journey are quite humorous and add colour to T.E.'s rather dry architectural descriptions. 'Ned and I, evading the "gardien", went over the rest of the castle by ourselves and by dint of forcing locks and climbing over doors and up walls succeeded in getting in every part of it.' Frank also describes some of Ned's explorations in the cellars at Coucy: 'When we got to one end Ned felt himself slipping down into a pit, and got rather a shock, as we could not see in the least how deep it was.' In fact it was six feet deep.

After Coucy I headed on for a few miles more before reaching Soissons at 6p.m. Eighty kilometres today but no problems physically or mechanically so far. The following day was an uneventful run to Provins, 110km. in the blazing sunshine. Every bit of shade was a relief from the heat, and I was glad to have taken a long-sleeved shirt since, being fair-skinned, I burn easily.

I reached Provins at 4.30 p.m. and walked up the hill to the Tour César. The garden which appears in Lawrence's photo is still there, surrounded by the chain-link fence. Luckily part of the fence had collapsed and after checking that the coast was clear, I tiptoed into the garden and photographed the keep. After dinner, I walked back up to the old town to walk round the town walls, and I think I found the 'square tower turned inside out and cut in half' which Lawrence mentioned in his letter home (23 July 1908). It is a curious shape, looking in plan like a letter M.

From Provins I cycled through Troyes to Bar-sur-Seine where Lawrence stayed the night. In the hotel were prints of the town in 1910, near enough to 1908 to give me the flavour of how it appeared to him. I had covered nearly 600km. so far and my initial apprehension regarding the ability of me or the bike to accomplish the trip had faded: I was now almost enjoying it.

Lawrence's diet of bread, milk and fruit I found to be quite a sensible one. Usually I would buy a litre of milk from a small supermarché and would have that to supplement my breakfast. At lunchtime I would have a demi-baguette and fruit (peaches or bananas), then a hot meal in the evening.

Bar-sur-Seine to Cussy-les-Forges was a fairly uneventful but long ride of 120km. which took me from 9.30a.m. to 6p.m. with stops for lunch and sightseeing en route. Lawrence wrote that he didn't leave Bar-sur-Seine until 1p.m. which means that he must have travelled continuously, probably for six hours.

To Vézelay next day to see the basilica restored by Viollet-le-Duc. Lawrence's photograph of the central doorway is in Home Letters, and I was intrigued to notice that the photograph has been printed reversed, though only the position of Christ in the tympanum gives it away. Here in Vézelay the feeling of God in the air was so strong you could almost touch it. Hardly surprising then that Vézelay was a focal point for two of the Crusades. From here I rode on to Nevers to stay the night. Another 120km. day. It was at Nevers that Lawrence replaced a tyre, which had to be sent from Paris. The cost dug into his finances and he was concerned that he wouldn't have sufficient money to complete his journey.

Lawrence wrote that he was disappointed with the cost of his accommodation on the journey: 'The hotels all charge 2f. for bed and at least 2f. for dinner.' His litre of milk for breakfast cost him up to 1f.: 'result 5f are gone by morning: add some milk or fruit in the day, postcards (now total over 100) and postage, repair bands, solution, tips for the show places, an occasional bath etc. and you have a fair 7f. per day.' In the 1908 edition of the Baedeker tourist guide, a suggested price for breakfast was 1-1.50f, and dinner 3-5f. Similarly, the Murray guide suggests 9-10f a day for 'unpretentious' hotels including service and wine, with a room costing 2-3f.

Waiting for the tyre delayed Lawrence for two days. Strictly speaking I should have stayed two days in Nevers, but I passed up this authentic detail and instead set off for Le Puy without waiting. I bought a litre of milk and three peaches (for lunch) and cycled over the Loire to watch the rising sun shortening the shadows. By mid-afternoon, on the way to Cusset, the heat was melting the tar on the roads. I ran out of water and, as I passed through a village, asked a French woman leaning out of her window if she could fill one of my water bottles. She filled it to the brim with fresh, cool water. Later in his journey Lawrence mentions the French reaction to his taste for water: 'My water drinking is the subject of general amazement, far beyond what I thought possible... I heard last night the servants talking to the people next door, telling them there was an Englishman there with a strange hat, who drank water and liked it better than wine.' A journey like this certainly make one appreciate the qualities of water.

From Cusset I headed over hills to Ambert and then on to Le Puy. There are more hills just after Arlanc where 8km. of hill takes you up to 1,082 metres before the descent to Le Puy.

Lawrence was impressed with the scenery on the road to Le Puy and wrote that he had seen a 'superb gorge with river foaming in the bottom and rock and hill on either side'. The sights today don't quite match Lawrence's generous description of them.

I had a rest day in Le Puy (spent looking at the curious buildings perched on volcanic needles) then the following day set out in the morning mist for Crussol 120km. away. The hills over this part of  the route are the worst in the journey and Lawrence compared his struggle with sufferings in antiquity: 'From Le Puy I rode up for 10 miles more (oh dear 'twas hot) consoling myself that my sufferings were beyond the conception of antiquity, since they were a combination (in a similar climate) of those of Sisyphus... of Tantalus... and of Theseus. I got to the top at last, had 15 miles of up and down to St.-someone-I-don't-want- to-meet-again then a rush down 4,000 feet to the Rhône.'

When Lawrence reached the Rhône at Tournon he turned south and slept the night at Crussol Castle. Not merely for the sake of authenticity I did the same (I too was trying to husband my finances!) The nights at this time of year are quite mild and the only annoying feature is the mosquitoes which hum around you. I woke with the sun and continued down the Rhône valley slightly stiff after the hills the day before. I managed 110km. then found a hotel 10km. from Avignon. The following day I went through Avignon (where it rained for the first time during my journey) to Beaucaire and Tarascon, then on to Arles.

In Arles Lawrence went to see the church of St Trophime and its cloisters. Then, probably on a day trip, to see the ruined city of Les Baux. Whilst he was looking out towards the coastline at Les Baux, admiring the view from the promontory, 'The sun leapt out from behind a cloud and a sort of silver shiver passed over the grey: then I understood and instinctively burst out with a cry of "Thalassa, Thalassa" [the sea, the sea].'

It is very difficult to tell if Lawrence could actually have seen  the sea. When I was there the sky was cloudless and the horizon hazy. I could see water, but looking at my map, it must have been one of  the lakes about ten miles inland.

What Lawrence 'understood' was the joy that Xenophon and the Greek army felt when at last they saw the sea again after their long march through Persia. Lawrence had also had something of an arduous journey so he knew the elation they must have felt.

Lawrence's feelings for the east were strengthened the following day when he cycled through St Gilles to Aigues-Mortes, from where St Louis had sailed for his crusades. He made a sketch of the Tour Bourguignon, one of the corner towers of the town walls. The sketch is quite accurate and the scene is much the same today apart from the cars parked beneath. Go a few miles south to reach the sea which is just as Lawrence described it. Light dancing ripples, quite shallow and a warm day with a light breeze: 'I bathed today in the sea, the great sea, the greatest sea in the world... I felt that at last I had reached the way to the south and all the glorious east.' Well, I can second his view that the water was 'refreshingly delicious': you have to close your mind to the kids splashing about on li-los, but it is just possible to put yourself in Lawrence's place and share some of his feelings.

Lawrence continued to Nîmes then back to the coast again at Agde. He illustrated his thesis with a postcard of the cathedral of St Etienne. Personally I could not share Lawrence's view that the church is 'wonderful'. Its style and the black basalt stone it is made of make it too black and forbidding to be attractive, but Lawrence was no doubt thinking of its imposing buttress machicolations which gave it a 'front seat' in his thesis.

From Agde I followed the route through Béziers and Narbonne and stopped after a tough 80km. at Lézignan, some 30km. short of Carcassonne. Reading between the lines in Lawrence's letters I think he made it to Carcassonne that same day, but I did not think I could face another two hours in the saddle that afternoon. For about the third time I was humbled trying to keep up with this youth on the flying bicycle. E. T. Leeds was quite right when he said, 'That bicycle... was surely sped with wings.'

I reached Carcassonne at about 11a.m. the following day. The countryside reminded me of the Greek islands: rather sparse with bushes and vines and few trees. The main road is quite flat, but the hills of the Languedoc to the north, and the Pyrenees to the south channel the wind against you. My average speed for that day was the slowest of the journey.

The walls of the fortified city are a hotch-potch of styles from Roman to nineteenth-century restoration work. I noticed that two more of Lawrence's photographs - The Visigoth Wall and the castle itself - have been printed in reverse in the letters section of Crusader Castles. There have been surprisingly few changes in the eighty-two years since Lawrence was there, and the town made a fitting end to a very satisfying journey.

Having followed his route, I now have a greater understanding of the sentiments which Lawrence expresses in his letters, a better appreciation of his stamina, and an insight into what may seem to be his eccentricities. I had followed the route as faithfully as I could but I readily admit to taking advantage of modern technology to save time and labour. In spite of these advantages, I always felt slightly behind Lawrence and I have no idea when he found the time to write those long letters home, but I am glad that he did. To quote Ernest Barker: 'Of all the writings of Lawrence (the Seven Pillars, the translation of the Odyssey, and whatever he wrote) these letters touch one most. They are the man himself in the happy days of his early shining.'

Bibliography

M. R. Lawrence (ed.), The Home Letters of T. E. Lawrence and his Brothers (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1954)

T. E. Lawrence, Crusader Castles (ed. R. D. Pringle, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988)

E. Viollet-le-Duc, Military Architecture (trans. M. Macdermott, London, Greenhill Books, 1990)

Ernest Barker, reviews of Crusader Castles in The Observer, 2/8/36 and 11/10/36

A. W. Lawrence (ed.), T. E. Lawrence by his Friends (London, Jonathan Cape, 1954)

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