by Ian Vorster
Black and white photography by Eric Attwell, color photography by Ian Vorster
“I have just been reading through your letter and have come to the conclusion that you must have been drunk when you wrote it.”
The reaction from one of Eric Attwell’s younger brothers when he received a letter from Eric saying that he and his elder brother, Jack were going to cycle from Port Elizabeth to London, wasn’t quite encouraging. The comment featured in an article in The Cyclist, the first in a series to cover the entire trip. The magazine was published every Wednesday and cost tuppence.
Enc and Jack made it. Their trip was the first documented transcontinental African cycle journey. It took almost two years, of which only eight months were spent riding. Four months were spent in Bulawayo, waiting for torrential rains to clear, and the rest was broken up along the way.
I had the privilege of interviewing Eric in 1999. He loaned me his scrapbooks so that I might photograph them. Their pages are were, but the print was still good. As I flipped through them, I was caught up in the evocative images. They captured my imagination and I pictured myself and my brother riding along a gravel road all the way to Pretoria, Musina and beyond on a track simply known as The Great North Road.
Eric Attwell (1914-2003) in 1999.
The first day saw the brothers manage 34 miles to Addo. It took them two days to recover from the exhaustion and sunburn before they could move on. Elephants still roamed some of the hills in the area, which by then were being guarded by the government. The fertility of the Sundays River Valley gave way to the aridity of the Karoo.
From this “place of sheep” to the former Orange Free State (now Free State), the brothers were continually reminded of the Boer War. Forts and blockhouses marked the route, as well as bullet scars on some of the bridges. In his book, The Road to London, Eric’s quotes about the area show a good sense of humor, which must have been useful along the way. Rivers in the Karoo are described as, “ones into which, having fallen, you stand up, dust yourself off and look for a spot to climb out.” The Free State is described in writer Leonard Flemming’s words, “What it is really free from is not recorded … Every year, large quantities of grain are sown, and every seven years or so large crops are reaped …Farming is of a mixed sort. Borers and cutworms mixed up with the maize, lice and hail with the wheat, and so on.”
Eric and Jack spent a week in Johannesburg, dancing in the tearooms and lounges, as was common then in the evenings. The trek up to the border took them along the old Voortrekkers trail. They spent a month in Musina, because they had to work to save up the money to be allowed a visa into Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
Gone Away
As I flipped through the pages of The Cyclist, photographs of a bike on the banks of the Zambezi, in front of the pyramids, and along nameless bush tracks draw me back. The headlines from the old cuttings in the scrapbook still capture the essence of it all:
TIRED OF BORING EXISTENCE HE CHATS WITH DIETING WARRIORS BOUGHT BIKES, SAW THE WORLD
It all began in March 1937, when the two bought a pair of Royal Enfield bicycles (see sidebar bottom) with sprung saddles, metal-rod brakes and three speed shifters. They collected the machines at closing time on a Friday, paying £8 each for them, and headed home to pack. After bidding farewell to friends and posting a ‘Gone Away’ sign on their front door, they departed.
“Any planning,” you may ask? They bought a map showing the route to Cairo. That was it. No savings, no guidebooks, no reservations, no schemes, nada, zilch, nothing. Just a friendship and a yearning for something more.
I began to go through some of the questions I had prepared. I’d read Eric’s book three times in the past 18 months and enjoyed different aspects of it each time. It’s not often one has the opportunity to meet a favorite author in person. In no time at all, we were reliving the trip.
Left: Jack Attwell at the Great Zimbabwe ruins. Construction on the city began in the 11th century and continued until it was abandoned in the 15th century. It was built by ancestors of the Shonas who are currently located in Zimbabwe and neighboring countries. The stone city could have housed up to 18,000 people at its peak. It is a Unesco World Heritage site. Right: Jack Attwell at Victoria Falls — Mosi-oa-Tunya, (Thundering Smoke) in the Lozi language. The waterfall is on the Zambezi River in southern Africa, and provides habitat for several endemic species of plants and animals. Based on its combined width of 1,708 meters (5,604 ft) and height of 108 meters (354 ft), it is the world’s largest sheet of falling water.
Push Bikes
As lucid and expressive as his writing, Eric explained how the start was still as clear to him as If it were yesterday. In a manner, he said, it was part protest against the Native Lands Act of 1913, which restricted black people from buying or occupying land except as employees of a white master. The Act opened the door for white ownership of 87 percent of land, and left black people scrambling for what was left. Both brothers had bunked one too many stints of compulsory military training at the Oudtshoorn Infantry Base. A summons for their arrest was out and it was time to do that one great trip they had been chatting about for so long. Hence their skulking departure.
I asked him about the cycling. They averaged between 25 and 50 miles per day. Some days they did only 20. Much depended on the hospitality of locals along the way. The hospitality of the Afrikaans farming folk struck them time and again, as did the hardship of rural life in the 1930s. Many nights they simply slept in the veldt. It was part of the experience. There was no itinerary.
Laden, the bikes weighed about 100-pounds (45kg). The only luxury they had allowed themselves before leaving was to add a 3-speed derailleur them. Despite that, there were many hills which were walked.
Thinking about it, I realized that with a 100-pound load on my bike, which today has between 11 and 30 gears, I would probably be in first or second up many of those climbs, all of which were gravel. These would have been gears which they didn’t have. No wonder my old man used to call a bicycle a push bike.
Having left at such short notice, the men simply loaded up the “old kit bag” and headed for “them hills.” It was while staying at Musina that they set to preparing themselves for what they had come to realize would be some arduous travel. Panniers were ordered, as well as sleeping bags and a little tent. They had no weapons. They did have a guitar slung beneath Jack’s crossbar. Those were the days when making your own music was a part of growing up. There were no earbuds. Singing around the campfire was a reality.
Much of the way they existed on bread, cheese, fruit and water. Dates were a favorite. Often, they ate what their hosts provided. The curry along the way had volatile, jaw-dropping, eye-watering, butt clinching effects — frequently curtailing all decent cycling efforts.
They didn’t even consider losing anything through theft. “Not once did we feel the slightest apprehension for our safety,” said Eric.
The Great North Road ran from Cape Town to Cairo in 1936.
Indispensable Leaning Posts
Punctures were not a serious problem. According to an advertisement in the scrapbook, this was because they were using the “intrepid John Bull Cycle Tyres.” Eric said that they were diddled out of any remuneration for the advertisement because they were so naïve as to believe that if they shared the photos with the company, they would automatically receive payment. The ad was published, and they did not hear from John Bull Tyres again.
Tsetse flies were a problem. Eric said that at first they thought that by riding fast enough they could dodge them. “But we soon discovered that tsetses had a turn of speed far superior to ours!” While going uphill they were caught. And bitten. So, they fashioned makeshift fly swishing implements — with almost resulted in disaster — when flicking one biting fly off the small of his back, Eric lost control of his bike, hit a pothole, and careered off the track and down a bank, flying head first over his handlebars. The result was a twisted frame and bent forks which were straightened days later when they found a garage.
Broken spokes turned out to be the greatest mechanical failure with their Royal Enfield bikes. It was a mission to repair the wheel, so they would wait until four or five had gone before sitting down to the job.
They had no previous cycling experience and were not particularly fit when they left Port Elizabeth. The leg to Addo nearly destroyed them, but they grew into it. At that time there were only 60 miles (100 km) of paved road between Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg, a distance of just over 600 miles. The rain in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Tanganyika’s (Tanzania) malaria, and the thigh-busting climbs of North Africa did little to dissuade them. The sand of the 170-mile desert road to Alexandria, the cobbles of Greece and the snow of Germany saw them graduate summa cum laude.
The old news cuttings which show them in front of a BBC television camera made me wonder how far away the lights of Port Elizabeth must have seemed to them on that first night in Britain.
Eric recalls what he wrote of that evening, “We drew such strength from our cycles during those ghastly minutes. They became indispensable as leaning posts and spared lookers-in the farcical spectacle of the intrepid world cyclists visibly trembling.” I loved the way he spoke. Who speaks or even writes like that in the 21st Century?
Whether it was Dutch farmers, Masai warriors, Nile Dinka, Indian entrepreneurs, all were friendly. From these to Heil Hitlering soldiers on a Viennese station, and a job in the Spitfire factory in Bristol (see sidebar) throughout the war, it was all made possible because of their yearning for more and a friend to share it with.
After the interview, I folded up the old map the brothers had used and asked if I might photograph it. It felt strange to be holding something so tangibly connected to the adventure. Seeing the South African countryside in those years, let alone Africa was a rare privilege. Eric realized that when he was interviewed. Yet, he said, “We never really felt as if we were going off into wildest Africa.
The pencil markings on the map show distances, a pen drawn along the red route through British territories reveals the planning phase. Colonial names date the map, and the torn folds belie its age. How many people over the age of 80 have a map of their one great adventure I wonder. How many people at all?
Quality Control in a Spitfire factory: The brothers arrived in London without any cash, and had to find work quickly. When Jack Attwell — an engineer by trade — secured a position as a tool maker at the Spitfire fighter plane factory in Bristol, he gave Eric a little booklet about quality control. Eric joined him on the train journey to Bristol and studied the booklet from cover to cover. The next day he was hired as a quality control inspector. The factory was bombed frequently in the early years of the war. One raid put Eric on crutches for a few weeks..
Royal Enfield Cycles: This account of the ride was derived from Eric Attwell’s book, The Road to London. Royal Enfield did not sponsor the brothers. This account makes it appear as if they did. Eric is quite disparaging about Royal Enfield in The Road to London, something this account somehow managed to miss.
Eric Attwell described himself as a sensitive person by nature. His political awareness was sharpened by interactions he had with hosts along the ride. That led to his active involvement with the Amalgamated Engineering Union while working in aircraft factories during the war years.
Soon before the war ended Eric met and married a French woman. Together they set sail for South Africa after the war to start a new life.
An event that heralded a new era in South Africa was the rise of the Nationalist Party in 1948. The new government lost little time in enforcing its apartheid ideology and soon cracked down on all serious opposition from non-white political organizations. Eric’s radical opinions and his involvement in such “subversive” activities as trying to organize black trade unions made him a marked man by the apartheid government. In 1950 he was declared a “Named Person,” which apart from being watched and monitored, also meant he lost his passport. It was to be 29 years before he regained the ability to travel internationally.
In 1957 he became involved in numerous welfare organizations including the Poet Elizabeth School Feeding Fund. He served as founding chairman and, later, as Honorary Life President. The Fund raised the necessary money by voluntary effort — for example by hosting an annual theatre event which Athol Fugard routinely supported. Fugard is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director, and is widely regarded as South Africa’s greatest playwright. He is best known for his political and penetrating plays opposing apartheid. Some have been adapted for film. In the last decade of its existence over a million rand a year was needed to feed 42,000 needy school children of color, five days a week. The feeding fund provided that amount at a time when the US-SA exchange rate was $1 to R2.
When the Nationalist government declared a State of Emergency during the Sharpeville Uprising of 1960, Eric was among those rounded up and detained in prison for 49 days.
Eric was involved with various organizations until his death in 2003, including the Eastern Province Region of the Wildlife and Environment Society, for whom he produced a quarterly newsletter, and the Music Society of Port Elizabeth. His brother Jack died in a motorcycle accident in 1963. The Road to London is dedicated to him with these words: To the memory of Jack. The finest companion I could have had. The forward was written by Athol Fugard.
The political turn of the tide that came when Nelson Mandela’s term as president ended saw the start of massive corruption. The School Feeding Fund was not immune. When a news article was published in the Eastern Province Herald in 2002 about the impending collapse of the fund, one source blamed it on the fact that the white administrators had not sufficiently trained their black replacements in accounting. Eric wrote a letter to the editor to say that as far as accounting, he had been able to manage the flow of funds for almost 40 years with a little notebook and pencil.
