Yesterday I was just searching my PC for a cycling map PDF and what I found as well was a clipping I took from the Cape Times for 14 December 1905 when I was researching my great-uncle Reg's life in S. Africa as a keen amateur cyclist and unsuccessful bicycle dealer [https://docs.google.com/.../1C2tqPOMwJ7XsZ0bZWYot.../edit...].
Well, I read through it to try to work out why I had copied it in the first place, and came across this extraordinary story. It's about a young Afrikaaner farmer's ride right across S. Africa from his home in Pretoria to Cape Town, recently completed and deemed newsworthy. It was "an excellent piece of cycle riding" "[B]eing an ardent cyclist and having many friends in South Africa, he determined to pay them a visit and take a holiday." His adventure was all the more honourable because it was "undertaken for no wager but for pleasure," and he "had a capital time."
Nicolas Van Wyk rode almost 1,800 kilometers on primitive roads in sixteen and a half days -- a couple of them spent pushing his bike because of "vile" road conditions. [https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit...]
He was mounted on a single-speed Rudge-Whitworth bicycle with a 75" gear, i.e. each rotation of his pedals would move him as far as if he was on a penny-farthing with a front wheel 6'3" tall. This is about as tough as they come. But it "carried him splendidly, and in fact tyre troubles were the only ones worth recording, and they are inevitable" on a route like his. [It may have been one of their new Aero-Specials, one of the finest bikes in the world at the time -- https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/1902-rudge-whitworth.../ -- and surprisingly light at just 25 pounds.]
To add to his problems, he had been severely injured in July 1900 while fighting the British as a Boer Commando on the Orange Free State-Natal border. He lost his left arm and was left with a weakened right hand too, when he was just 20. So by the time of his ride he was 25, and had evidently adjusted to his disabilities. As the Cape Times's correspondent noted, "Those who know what a difficult task it is to hold a cycle up with both hands through heavy going will appreciate the grit which brough Van Wyk's self-appointed task to a successful close." And what about his “tyre troubles”? I have enough trouble mending punctures with two hands, in my garage, rather than with one weak hand at the side of a dirt track.
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Van Wyk's overall speed was not particularly fast, but the days spent walking must have brought it down somewhat. His daily stages varied in length, not just because of road conditions but because of where his friends lived. The longest was more than 200 kilometers, which would be an achievement even today, on a modern bike, travelling light, and with plenty of gears and two arms. So even though 110 kilometers a day was not, perhaps, "an exceptional performance,” it was still highly meritorious — “there are few who attempt the task, and of the few who attempt it, how many carry it through?"
I can find nothing else online about Van Wyk, except for the place and date of his capture by the British [https://www.angloboerwar.com/name-search], and a home address Google cannot place. But he certainly deserves not to be completely forgotten.
