Blog Posts

Essential pack list for cycle-camping

27/6/2021

In 1908, eleven years after carrying out and writing his book about the world's first portable cycle-camping trip, TH Holding wrote The Camper's Handbook.

It's a massive 400 pages of very comprehensive detail on every aspect of camping, on which he had become a notable expert.

The section on cycle-camping includes this packing list.... all of which can fit, amazingly, in one large handlebar bag which was Holding's favoured means of carrying equipment.

I love seeing what things were considered essential then, and which we would still include today!

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pages 98 and 99

16/5/2021

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I realise I haven't been remembering to keep this blog updated, though if you follow my newsletter or Patreon you'll know that progress is being made! Albeit slowly... I'm currently drafting page 108 of about 148.

Here's a draft from a couple of weeks ago, as the four rode the seventeen miles from Maam, after they'd obtained hot potatoes from a farmhouse and cooked up an excellent lunch in the field, on to Cong.

I think I need to make that "huge piano encased in a box" a little bigger when I draw the final version, actually.

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I get to talk about this as a newsletter guest!

21/8/2020

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I was thrilled to be offered a guest spot in the weekly mailing produced by a superb filmmaker whom I follow. Adam Westbrook writes The Third Something full of "ideas, sketches and reflections on the creative process" and it's always deeply thought-provoking and entertaining, very highly recommended even when it isn't all about me! This one is, and I get to talk about figuring out my weird way of drafting this graphic novel, which finally got me unstuck and able to make (slow) progress on it. Click on image below to read.

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How it started, and all about the process

5/7/2020

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This is a talk I gave at Laydeez Do Comics in London back in January 2020, about the making of this graphic novel from initial idea to the endless research to page layout methods and more...

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Four men in a tent this size?!

4/11/2019

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Using the instructions from T H Holding's book for making your own tent, I worked out the size of this paper model to be in scale with my little grey man, putting his height at 5'8" which is a good guess for Victorian times. I wanted to have a reference for getting the relative sizes accurate, now they I've reached the part of the story where they've pitched the tent for the first time and started camping. It's still very difficult to imagine four grown men, one rather large, sleeping in such a space but we know they did!

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First twelve pages - done!

30/3/2019

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When one is approaching publishers with a graphic novel proposal, it's my understanding that standard practice is to show about twelve sequential pages finished enough to get an idea of the artwork and the storytelling. That's been a great impetus to actually get the beginning done in something like final form.

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Hedgerows and tin openers

6/1/2019

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This is, of course, a story about a cycling trip... but this is part of why I love it: diversions into all sorts of subjects, expressed in inimitable verbal style by the highly opinionated T.H. Holding.

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Getting Unstuck

6/11/2018

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I admit it. I got really, really stuck - to the point where I'd stopped working on this for a couple of months (!!) - all because of the beginning of the second sentence to the right. I so wanted to show my characters seeing Castlebar from the hill. I know what road they were riding, and I followed that road on google streetview a million times trying to find a place where the town might've been seen from.

Okay, there is the matter of 120 years having passed, but basic topography must remain, and given the town today being far bigger, it should've been even more visible. Are there trees or buildings in the way? Or....?

Eventually I hope to go to Ireland and follow the route and see for myself, but in the meantime I went about it a different way; this is after all only a draft and will all be reviewed later.

Another issue being the colours of the buildings. I've seen good old photos to base these panels on, but of course all in black and white. Guessing at plausible colours for the time being.

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Dressing the four main characters

1/6/2018

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It's time to finalise what these guys look like and exactly what they're wearing. It's a fairly limited choice, either a "lounge" or a "Norfolk" jacket, in colours ranging from tweedy green to brown to grey. So here are my current ideas for Holding, Frank, Little Billie, and Beaumont, respectively.

There are plenty of photos of people on bicycles in the 1890s to be found, but of course they're in black and white. So I spent a delightful couple of afternoons at the British Library earlier this year, looking at The Tailor & Cutter journals from 1896 and 1897. Some of these included colour "fashion plates" - illustrations which tailors could use to advertise their services, and cycling having become very popular in the 1890s, there were a few showing people with bicycles. I also found fascinating references to cycling wear in other written materials.

"The fashionable Cycling Costune just now for gentlemen is evidently the Lounge and knickers, the vest being optional. The old style of tight fitting breeches is quite a thing of the past..."
-The Tailor & Cutter, January 1897

"The costume adopted by the Cyclists' Touring Club (organised in 1878 as the "Bicycle Touring Club") is upon the "all woollen" lines and may be recommended as at once neat, sanitary and durable. A special West-of-England tweed has been adopted for the outer garments, the pattern being a small grey check. Flannel, in two different thicknesses and all wool... is made of the same pattern, so that if the rider wears a shirt of this material the absence of a wasitcoat is not noticeable, a material gain in very warm weather... The coat may be either a "Lounge" jacket or a "Norfolk" : vest present or not; and the nether garments, breeches, trousers, or knickerbockers..."

"The beautifully coloured litho Plate we are giving with this issue illustrates one of the most popular types of jackets worn at this season of the year, viz., the Norfolk jacket. There is scarecely a sport in which it is not used, whilst for golfing, cycling, pedestrian and fishing exercises it is considred by many to be the ideal garment. Our illustration shows it in its simplest form, viz., with one pleat up each forepart and down each side of the back. Large patch pockets are added to each side, and the general get up of the garment is loose and easy fitting. ... It usually forms part of a knicker suit, the cap being of the same maerial, and the hose made of similar colour to the suit."
-- The Tailor & Cutter, 1896

"He had on his new brown cycling suit - a handsome Norfolk jacket thing for 30s - and his legs .... were more than consoled by thick chequered stockings thin in the foot, thick in the leg."
- H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance, 1896

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Unpaved roads

26/4/2018

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Sure, we cyclists have potholes and all sorts of bad surfaces to contend with but at least the roads are generally paved (thanks to campaigning by early cyclists, but that's another story). Two WIP panels from page 30.

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What's this all about??

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

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 woolen 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, bringing to life a time of horse-drawn mailcars, kitchens with peat fires for cooking, 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.

(And, if you'd like to support this and receive ridiculously detailed behind-the-scenes updates: join me on Patreon)

Essential pack list for cycle-camping

pages 98 and 99

I get to talk about this as a newsletter guest!

How it started, and all about the process

Four men in a tent this size?!

First twelve pages - done!

Hedgerows and tin openers

Getting Unstuck

Dressing the four main characters

Unpaved roads

What's this all about??

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Michi Mathias illustration & comics