A Victorian Lady Cycles The World

Isabel Homewood (nee Fooks) avidly took to cyclin in 1894, after she was widowed. She travelled very widely around·Europe and the Middle East, through the Antipodes and across America. Following an early Victorian childhood, she experienced crossing the Panama Isthmus before the Canal was completed, pioneering farming in New Zealand, travel by steamer and sailing ships and the First World War. The latter curtailed her ambition to cycle round the world when she had only reached Australia, so she returned to England and trained as a midwife. As she was asked by various bodies to comment on what she thought of certain situations, such as relations between the Armenians and the Turks, she decided to include her personal views on the people she met and their culture in he journals. These contemporary accounts form the basis for this book.