Saddle Sure

Following in the footsteps and cycle tracks of his hero T. E. Lawrence, Todd Mauer travels from Dordogne to Haute-Vienne stopping off at landmarks along the way

- Todd Mauer

Nothing is written!” In David Lean’s 1962 cinematic masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia, T.E. Lawrence utters this iconic line to Omar Sharif’s Sherif Ali before venturing into the searing Nefud desert to rescue a lost Bedouin soldier under his command. Somehow, more than 50 years after the film was released, I find myself chanting the same line over and over as a motivational mantra while laboring up a steep hill – my own private ‘Nefud desert’ – on a signposted 400-kilometer cycle route called ‘Dans La Roue de Lawrence d’Arabie’ (In The Wheel of Lawrence of Arabia) in the Dordogne.

Lawrence, of course, rescued his soldier, and I’m delighted to say I made it to the top of my hill.

I’m not certain if both acts qualify as equal demonstrations of the human capacity to overcome adversity, but as I crested my hill I was as chuffed as I was huffed.

If most people should ever happen to associate T.E. Lawrence with the bicycle, it’s unlikely to be a happy association. Lawrence’s 1935 death in a motorcycle accident while swerving to avoid two schoolboys riding bikes on a

Dorset road was etched into the collective cinematic conscious during the opening scene in Lean’s film. But for most of Lawrence’s life, his relationship with bicycles was passionate, even joyful.

As a teenager, he embarked on multiple cycle tours in both Britain and France, culminating in 1908 in an incredible 3,200-kilometre tour of France, visiting castles for his Oxford thesis on medieval architecture.

On your bike