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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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!

Thomas Hiram Holding, an experienced cyclist and camping enthusiast, combined these two pastimes in 1897 when he designed 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 - I'm showing his adventure using entirely his own idiosyncratic 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

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What's this all about??

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