Round the World on a Wheel: Being the narrative of a bicycle ride of nineteen thousand two hundered and thirty-seven miles through seventeen countries ... Fraser, S. Edward Lunn, and F. H. Lowe

by John Foster Fraser

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Genres: Biography, Cycling

558 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1899

About the author

Sir John Foster Fraser was a Scottish travel author. In July 1896, he and two friends, Samuel Edward Lunn and Francis Herbert Lowe, took a bicycle trip around the world riding Rover safety bicycles. They covered 19,237 miles in two years and two months, travelling through 17 countries and across three continents. He documented the trip in the book Round the World on a Wheel.

Between books he was a journalist. In 1901 while working for The Yorkshire Post he wrote, among other things, a 16-page description of Queen Victoria's funeral. In the UK in 1916 he lectured on What I Saw in Russia.

Reviews

[Guy Lesser · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1899, and long regarded as a minor classic of English travel lit, Fraser's 1st hand account of an arduous 2 year journey is without a question a slog, effectively conveying the numbing daily tedium and physical rigor of 20,000 miles on a bicycle. That said, it is an essential link between Kinglake's Eothen of the 1840s and many of my 20th century favorites like Peter Fleming's Brazilian Adventure or Robert Byron pre-Road to Oxiana works (such as First Russia Then Tibet). Which is to say it describes in a self-depreciatory, and quietly ironic way an essentially useless but epic quest into the Unknown, by ill-prepared and under-equipped amateur gentlemen adventurers. Arguably, its greatest interest is how effectively it conveys the very final hours of life before internal combustion ruled the world, when the chief rival of the bicycle was not the car but the horse, and the Orient Express not the Concord represented the latest advance in high speed transportation. Although I have yet to encounter much more than a photo or two of the actual bicycles the author and his friends used for their journey, they are fairly clearly recognizable ancestors of the modern long distance touring cycle and not the big wheel penny farthings of barely a decade earlier. And so, probably not so very different from a solid steel framed Schwinn cruiser-- yet more than enough in the late-1890s to inspire whole villages with astonishment and gain audiences with princes.

[Eve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wry scepticism and dry humour shape this endearingly arrogant account of Fraser and his companions' round the world venture from a very British perspective.

[Bill Crowther · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best cycle touring books written in a sardonic dry style bit like Jerome K Jerome

[Scott Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much like their ride, the start and finish were easily read, the hard slog was the middle.

[Claire · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not sure how I persevered, 512 pages... This will definitely put you to sleep... Zzzzzz...