Michi Mathias. illustration & comics.

Gaps and tin-openers

25/9/2023

TH Holding has a lot to say about all sorts of subjects besides just bicycles and tents.

Here, as they go into a field to have their first lunch on the road after obtaining baked potatoes and jugs of water and buttermilk from a cottage, he comments at length about gaps in hedgerows, and about tin-openers. It was a lot of fun looking up the various kinds of tin-openers which were in use in the late 1890s.

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The trouble with buying buttermilk

1/8/2023

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Being eternally agreeable...

13/6/2023

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A little more about getting along, then it's back on the bikes. Though crossing the "wonderful" Moy river leads Holding into thoughts about international trade, of course.

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Getting along

17/5/2023

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After all his detailed explanation of what's wrong with Bantam bicycles on a cycling tour over the past few pages, Holding is now careful to point out that disagreements and "grumbling" have no place on any sort of expedition.

"May not patience and forbearance stifle every cross feeling?"

This was a rather difficult page to figure out, and I'm not sure I've done it justice yet but will leave it here for now in the interests of keeping the momentum going!

We'll be back on the road very soon, heading for Castlebar via Ballylahon...

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And just a bit more about Bantams

3/5/2023

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What's wrong with Bantams? pp16-18

27/2/2023

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I love what an inventive time the 1890s was for bicycles. So many ideas being tried out, so many different types of frames. The old high-wheel Ordinary still existed, though wad being largely replaced by the Safety model.

Crypto Bantams were a short-lived attempt, from about 1892 for a few years, to hold on to the principles of the Ordinary without the dangerous height of the wheel, by gearing the front wheel.

Despite their apparent less than satisfactory performance on this cycling tour, and Holding's scathing opinion of them, a racing cyclist called Frank Shortland won in three consecutive years on his Bantam competing against Safeties:

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Sailing vs Cycling

29/1/2023

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Holding and his three companions on the cycling adventure are very experienced sailors as well, having spent much time together all over the British isles for many years. So as part of their time in Ireland they'd naturally taken a couple of their sailing canoes as well - both, incidentally, designed by TH Holding himself.

It's rare that one sentence gets an entire page to itself but it seemed right for both of these, and for this to be a double-page spread of contrast.

Originally, I was just going to show the four figures cycling off into the distance, quite small, a bit like in this draft: ------>>>

But no, I realised it simply had to look like fun or it would make no sense, it wouldn't work! Cycling had to look at least as appealing as the idea of sailing on a lake, which meant an awful lot more drawing!

I also tried spacing the lines at the top to give more sense of... freedom? randomness? but I'm not really sure if that's worked so might possibly put them back as here in the draft.

Next, we discover that two of the bicycles just aren't really fit for purpose...

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talking about churches

18/1/2023

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Not just an experienced expert at camping, sailing, and cycling but knowledgeable about history and all sorts of things including old churches. He comes back to the subject later in the book; this is just an aside, filling time in Foxford whilst waiting to start the trip properly.

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introducing the "cuisine"

13/1/2023

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There's a lot of odd language in this book. Which is one of the things I love about it. Occasionally it needs a footnoted explanation, but wherever possible I'm hoping I can draw my way out of any possible confusion.

Here as the four of them set up a camp from their bicycles for the first time ever, Holding is explaining all the processes and necessities after the tent goes up, including his camp stove:

I looked up that word 'cuisine' and found its archaic meaning was indeed kitchen. Merriam Webster says Etymology: French, literally, kitchen, from Old French, from Late Latin coquina. Whether or not anyone else was using it to mean a portable kitchen like this I have no idea; probably not many were talking about such things anyway! Toward the end of his book (and mine, too) the interior workings of this apparatus are shown in full detail - two wicks, a water bath to avoid overheating... It's quite something!

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How to pitch a tent

16/12/2022

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Well, somehow I thought these pages would be quick and easy, being mostly technical.

But boy was I wrong. Figuring out exactly what was meant by the wording, looking at diagrams of the tent, and trying to show the process reasonably clearly has taken... far more days than I care to admit!

Here's are T.H. Holding's instructions from the book which I had to make sense of:

"A couple of armfuls of the finest hay were spread out in the most sheltered spot. This hay was carefully leveled and on top of it the ground sheet was placed. The tent poles were then jointed together, the six sections being made into two poles. The closed end of the tent was put up to windward. A clove hitch is formed and the top of the pole run through it. Whilst one holds this, another takes the front end guy and sticks it through a similar hitch and holds it up whilst the man from behind, having forced in his peg, comes to carry out the foreline and peg it in also. The two end corner pegs are then put into the earth, the forward ones ditto, and the tent poles now stand bolt upright. Then the two bottom hooks are fastened - made to hook the reverse way to prevent them getting unhooked. Then these two front corner pegs are put in their position. Inside and outside the tent, twenty inches from the ground, are two strings. The front end of the tent is looped together and tied up by these precisely as curtains on a window are held back by a cord or chain. This permits free ingress and egress for the business that has to follow. Two pegs go in the after end of the tent and one or two go in the side. These side pegs must be put out as far as possible. Whilst one man is putting in these outside, the is on his knees inside. But what is he doing? He is smoothing out the ground sheet, putting it out at its four corners to its utmost limit and putting underneath it the draught curtain. This operation done, there is the thin woollen blanket which has to go on top of the ground sheet. Why is it used? To prevent a variety of consequences which many be either possible or probably certain were it not for the provisions now about to be described. The ground is cold. Hay is not always available. Where it is, use it. A slight woollen garment or rug makes it much warmer to sleep on, pleasanter to touch, and saves the ground sheet from being damaged. The ground sheet I have said is pegged down at the corners. There is an eye at the top of the peg into which a string is inserted that keeps the upper sheet taut. Now everything is ready and the whole gear placed insde the tent for our use."

And here's how these words have been incorporated to show this process, across four pages:

It took so long that I confused myself and had to re-do parts of the third page - page 64 - twice. When I was working on page 65, I mistakenly thought the ground sheet was only being put down then. So I went back and removed it from page 64... and it was only when I looked again at the first page, after uploading it here, that I remembered they had indeed put it down in place first. So re-scanned my coloured-in version and spliced it back in again!

I think I've got this right in the end...

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What's this all about??

I'm making a true-story graphic novel called
Two Shilings a Day.
Read synopsis here.

Touring and camping with a bicycle is a common activity today but imagine the first time this was attempted, in the late 19th century, when cycles were heavy steel with just one gear, roads were unpaved, batteries and nylon and zippers didn't exist, and even outdoor activities were undertaken in woollen three-piece suits!

Travel back in time to meet the master tailor Thomas Hiram Holding, a keen cyclist and camping enthusiast. He combined these two pastimes in 1897 when he invented a lightweight portable tent and embarked on a pioneering cycle-camping tour with three friends in Ireland.

This graphic novel is a faithful adaptation of Holding's own book Cycle and Camp, from a time of horse-drawn mailcars, kitchens with peat fires, and farmhouses shared with cattle. Part travelogue round rural west Ireland and
part how-to manual - including sewing ones own tent - his adventure is re-told entirely in his own idiosyncratic and rather opinionated words.

Holding’s fervent wish that anyone could now enjoy a holiday in the country without exorbitant cost proved so popular that he started a cycle-camping organisation, an organisation that became today’s Camping and Caravanning Club.

Gaps and tin-openers

The trouble with buying buttermilk

Being eternally agreeable...

Getting along

And just a bit more about Bantams

What's wrong with Bantams? pp16-18

Sailing vs Cycling

talking about churches

introducing the "cuisine"

How to pitch a tent

What's this all about??

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