Tour de France countdown: 2

In honour of the coming of the Tour de France to Cambridge on 7th July, the Special Collections blog will feature a daily image from one of the Library’s early books on cycling in the week leading up to the big day.  Many carry eye-catching illustrated covers, showing early bicycles and pioneering lady cyclists, and are an important resource for the study of early cycling in Britain.  Most came to the Library in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, under the Copyright Act, and live in the Tower.  We hope you enjoy the display!

Alfred Bolton: Over the Pyrenees: a bicyclist’s adventures among the Spaniards (London: 1883)
“It is a curious circumstance that among the numerous countries in Europe visited by the English bicyclist, sunny Spain, the land of romances, dusky sierras, and historical associations, should have remained comparatively unexplored…” (p. vii)
(Shelfmark: 1884.7.1241)