A Pedaller Abroad - Being an Illustrated Narrative of the Adventures and Experiences of a Cycling Twain During a 1000 Kilometre Ride in and Around Switzerland
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A Pedaller Abroad - Being an Illustrated Narrative of the Adventures and Experiences of a Cycling Twain During a 1000 Kilometre Ride in and Around Switzerland - Chas. F. Simond
Chapter I.
DÉLÉMONT—Délémont. Les voyageurs pour Tavannes, Bienne, Berne et Neuchatel changent de train.
These words, in the monotonous voice of a very sleepy porter at Délémont station, reminded us that, so far as the train was concerned, our journey was at an end. And we weren’t sorry, my friend and I, after that hot night’s journey across France. We had ridden a tandem bicycle from London to Dover, viâ Maidstone and Ashford, a few days before, but thinking a gear of 76 in. (which was the gear of our mount) too high, and the machine too light for the trip we were about to commence, we. decided to send it back to town and trust to two singles which had been promised ready for us on our arrival in Switzerland. Result—we had to undergo that stuffy and generally uninteresting journey from Calais to Délémont, which is not so very many miles over the Franco-Swiss frontier, and from where we had determined to commence our annual tour on the Continent. I really think it worth while—and I speak from past experience of Continental cycling, for the most part in Switzerland, where I was one of the first riders (if not the actual pioneer) of safety bicycling—to take one’s own mount over, and more especially if one is a member of the C.T.C. The French Railway Companies very rightly consider a cycle as luggage of the passenger, and a nominal fee of a penny is charged for registration, so that, always excepting the extortionate demand of 7s. 6d. for the carriage of a bicycle accompanied by the owner, and at his risk, from London to Calais or vice versâ, one has not much trouble with one’s mount, and at the same time one knows its peculiarities and good or bad points. In our case, however, as before stated, we trusted to the machines secured beforehand on hire in Switzerland, and at the end of our ride we were so delighted with our mounts (full roadsters, and weighing 33 or 34 lbs.), that having the option to purchase them outright, we decided to buy them. They were new machines at the time, and we were more than satisfied with the bargain, as bargain each machine was. But to this narrative.
NEAR
YVERDON.
My friend, who has accompanied me on many other similar and more or less enjoyable and exciting trips, is an artist whom I shall call X, which can stand for the unknown quantity of good (or bad) traits in his character.
For a really thorough change of living and scenery I recommend Switzerland to enthusiastic cyclists, who are fit and strong enough for hard up and down-hill work.
I have, at various times, been pretty well all through it, from the Jura to the Alps, and over the highest and most difficult passes.
Although in such a mountainous country one must naturally do a good deal of pushing, the engineering skill displayed in the Alpine Routes is so marvellous, one is able, by steady riding, to surmount many of them without undue fatigue, owing to the slight gradients of the winding roads in these parts.
It is needless to say a really good and reliable brake is absolutely essential to anyone who contemplates a trip in the higher Alps (see Badminton Magazine of June, 1896), and in fact during the following ride we each had affixed to the driving wheel a pneumatic brake, as well as the ordinary plunger
pattern on the steering-wheel.
With the last-mentioned brake, as a safeguard for any special emergency, we found we could, with the greatest ease, govern the pace of our bicycles down the very steepest declines, and the elasticity of a resilient brake against a pneumatic tyre does not in the minutest degree injure the latter, whereas the pad of the former, when worn through after a certain amount of use, can easily be replaced, and with but a very small outlay. Another great safeguard against a runaway machine is a log of wood allowed to drag on the road some three or four yards behind the bicycle, and affixed to the saddle by a piece of string. This we found most useful in descending long unknown passes before we used the pneumatic brake. The idea has been most extensively copied, and very probably much improved upon. Be sure, reader, if you contemplate a trip in any of the lesser known parts of Switzerland, that you thoroughly understand your mount, as although in the larger towns you can most certainly get any small defect remedied, it is much more satisfactory to be able to repair any little accident that may occur to the machine, oneself. If you have a gear-case, have one that is easily detachable, as nothing is more annoying than not being able to get easily at the chain when one is almost certain that it is the cause of the trouble. Probably all this has been said many times before, but I am recounting my exact impression of cycling in Switzerland, and a more enjoyable way of seeing that most lovely of countries it is difficult to imagine. Walking, of course, is an excellent though slow mode of progression, and from a train you can’t see on both sides, behind and in front. Of course, there is the ancient diligence, but as the old order changeth, yielding place to new,
I recommend a