Steam Unicycle Journeys

From the Journals of Basil Bromley, Artist and Mechanician

Entry the Twelfth — 25th of May, 1873

A night’s sleep, even in the most indifferent of lodgings, can perform miracles. I awoke in Tiverton less a casualty than a craftsman renewed. The bruises from my tumble have faded to a tolerable ache, the nettle stings to an almost philosophical irritation. More importantly, I had before me the prospect of restoring dignity to my errant contrivance.

I devoted the morning entirely to repairs. With the assistance of a local smith—broad of back, taciturn of speech—I succeeded in fashioning a new drive-link from iron more trustworthy than my original alloy. He handled my sketches with curiosity, remarking that “no sane fellow would place a boiler atop a wheel, and then sit anywhere near it,” yet he wrought the piece with diligence. By noon the unicyclical machine stood whole once more. I paid him not only in coin but with a drawing of his forge, which he received with the solemnity of one given a relic.

The unicycle, when coaxed to life, rolled with a smoothness that felt deeply special, as if it recognised my devotion. We set off northward together, and for the first time in days I travelled without trepidation. The countryside of mid-Devon opened wide: orchards in blossom, cattle grazing indolently, lanes dappled with the shade of elms. It was travel not of calamity but of beauty.

At Bickleigh Bridge a child waved a posy of daisies at me, declaring that my machine looked “like a giant teapot on holiday.” I accepted the description with gratitude—it seemed far preferable to the accusations of sorcery that so often attend me. Later, a farmer’s wife offered me a cup of cider in exchange for a short demonstration in her yard. When the unicycle emitted a proud jet of steam, she applauded as though I had conjured a trick, and I, flushed with cider, bowed as though upon a stage.

By late afternoon I reached the outskirts of Taunton, my spirits correspondingly lifted. The landlady of the inn received me with unexpected warmth, remarking that she had “heard tell of the kettle-bicycle,” and was eager to see it for herself. When she laughed at its puffing, it was with delight rather than scorn. A wonderful moment: my unicyclical machine and I, not pariahs, but entertainers.

Thus concludes the twelfth day. Recovery is not mere mending of iron, but of confidence. For the first time, I begin to believe the road to John O’Groats itself may yet be mastered, conquered, and persuaded. Mile by improbable mile.

Entry the Eleventh — 24th of May, 1873

The day began with high promise. Exeter receded behind me beneath a sky of generous blue, and the roads toward Tiverton lay broad, sunlit, and forgiving. The Steam Unicycle, polished and eager, responded with unusual docility, and for an hour I entertained the notion that my journey might proceed henceforth without catastrophe.

But Fate, who despises complacency, had other designs. Midway up an incline near Stoke Canon, a sharp crack reverberated through the machine—a noise like a pistol discharged at close quarters. The unicycle shuddered, staggered, and pitched me unceremoniously onto the verge. There I lay among nettles, listening to the hiss of escaping steam, a man temporarily dethroned by his own creation.

The cause, upon inspection, proved grave: the main drive-chain, linking piston to wheel, had snapped clean through, its links strewn like a string of broken beads. Without it, motion was impossible; my machine had become a stationary kettle, admirable in appearance, useless in function.

Several passers-by stopped to observe. A farmer, leaning upon his stick, declared unhelpfully, “She’s had her say, and she won’t say more.” A young woman, carrying a basket of eggs, asked if I might simply “whistle her back to life.” I explained that steam yields to coal and water, not whistling. She smiled as though humouring a madman and walked on.

How I wished I had fitted the Unicycle with a Self-Mending Chain. For reasons of cost I forewent that luxury, yet how now I rue that decision. Such a chain is expensive, for it is forged of interlocking links that realign and reforge themselves under the heat of the journey. Nettle-stung and humbled, my refusal to fit such a device seemed the silliest decision in all of world history.

Lacking such marvels, I set to work with my file and the spare rivets that I carried in my repair kit. By mid-afternoon I had contrived a temporary repair—ungainly, precarious, but sufficient to limp forward. The machine lurched rather than rolled, shuddering like a consumptive patient, yet we crept onward together. Each yard was hard-won, and each hiss of the boiler seemed to echo my own exasperated sighs.

By evening I had reached Tiverton, exhausted, my garments blackened with soot from the hours of improvised repair. I found lodging at a modest inn, though the landlady demanded twice the usual price for stabling “that infernal object.” I paid without argument; the day had stripped me of resistance.

Thus ends the eleventh day: chastened, bruised, but stubbornly unvanquished. The mishap has reminded me that unicycling is a dialogue between man and machine. One must listen to brass as one listens to canvas, to coax rather than coerce. When I reach John O’Groats it will be not by conquest but by teamwork with my single wheel.

Entry the Tenth — 23rd of May, 1873

Dawn upon Dartmoor proved a pale affair, the horizon trembling with mist that seemed reluctant to withdraw. My cloak was sodden, my fingers stiff, yet I found a peculiar satisfaction in having endured the moor’s indifference. The Steam Unicycle, its brass dulled by dew, required a half-hour of coaxing before the boiler consented to work. When at last it exhaled its first plume of vapour, I confess I greeted it with something like affection, which is ridiculous for surely no one can feel affection for a machine!

The day’s journey carried me eastward, skirting the moor’s stern uplands toward Crediton and beyond. The land softened: hedgerows reappeared, cottages stood at proper intervals, and the roads regained the courtesy of paving. After days of gorse and granite, the sight of an orchard in blossom seemed wonderful in its gentleness.

Yet the machine would not allow me complacency. Mid-morning, as I climbed a hill near Sticklepath, the pressure valve betrayed a petulant streak, releasing an unexpected blast of steam that startled a passing clergyman. He crossed himself, muttering ‘The apocalypse is upon us!” before retreating hastily and shouting for me to repent. I reflected that my conveyance inspires less devotion than dread in men of the cloth—a fact perhaps worthy of a pamphlet when I am returned home.

Children remain, as ever, my most enthusiastic audience. In Crediton a band of them surrounded me, clamouring to know whether I sold hot pies from the chimney. One girl, bolder than the rest, touched the wheel and declared me “a traveller from the future.” I have carried that phrase with me all day. If the future is anywhere, is it not in the balance between brass, fire, and folly?

I rather think that some form of Adjustable Writing Desk for Riders must be contrived and added to the Steam Unicycle, permitting me to sketch or annotate whilst in motion. Imagine: the road itself recorded in real time, thoughts inscribed as they arise with the rhythm of the pistons. I fear the risk of imbalance, crash and catastrophe, but how such a desk would help my note taking and sketching.

By late afternoon I had descended into Exeter, where the cathedral spires greeted me like grave guardians of an older order. I paused in the shadow of the great west front, sketchbook in hand, the unicycle quietly hissing at my side. A beadle approached, frowning, and inquired whether I intended to wheel the machine into the nave. I assured him, with utmost solemnity, that I would not. He remained unconvinced, but allowed me to remain in the square.

Tonight I lodge in a respectable inn near the river. For the first time in several days my bed is dry, my supper warm, and my machine secure in a coach-house that smells delightfully of hay. My limbs ache with a profound fatigue, yet my mind remains alert, filled with images of orchards, towers, and the endless possibility of motion.

Thus concludes the tenth day. I feel, for the first time, the true length of the road—stretching away beyond Devon, beyond counties and cathedrals, toward something larger than mere destination.

Entry the Ninth — 22nd of May, 1873

The morning broke with a deceptive serenity, the kind of cool, bright air that tempts one into optimism. I set forth with the Steam Unicycle freshly stoked, its brasswork gleaming as though it, too, anticipated a day of steady progress. The road rose almost immediately into Dartmoor, that noble expanse of granite and gorse, where sheep graze like scattered punctuation across the heath.

Riding upon the moor is unlike the lanes of Cornwall. There the hedgerows confine, here the horizon liberates; one feels at once triumphant and exposed. The machine responded with unaccustomed grace, climbing the inclines with steady huffing, descending with a speed that, while unnerving, never quite mutinied. I even managed, for a half-mile stretch, to feel almost dignified—an artist upon his singular steed, master of a new form of conveyance.

Alas, dignity is a fragile condition. A sudden squall swept across the moor, as if conjured from the very granite. Rain lashed at me in diagonal sheets, the wind tugged at my hat with villainous intent, and the boiler, protesting, emitted jets of steam that mingled with the storm until I resembled a mobile chimney. There was no inn, no farmhouse, scarcely even a tree to grant relief. I pressed onward, but still no shelter did I find. Eventually the road dissolved into mire. I was exhausted and felt compelled to concede: this night I must camp under the stars.

I wheeled the unicycle beneath the lee of a tor, its bulk offering what shelter it might. There I spread my travelling cloak, gathered such gorse and heather as could be coaxed into bedding, and made myself a rude bivouac. The unicycle, its boiler drained, stood sentinel, dripping quietly as the rain subsided into mist. I confess I felt a strange companionship, as though it were a brass hound guarding me in sleep.

As I lay uncomfortable and cold, listening to the sighing of the moor, I suddenly conceived of a Self-Warming Travelling Mattress. I saw it complete in my mind: Steam from a miniature boiler would circulate through coiled tubes embedded within a light mattress, granting a constant heat to the person who slept above p. Were such a contrivance perfected, nights outdoors need never be endured but rather savoured. I made a note in my journal, thinking that one might market them to polar explorers.

Despite damp and chill – and no Self-Warming Travelling Mattress – I managed some hours of slumber, awakened once by the cry of an owl, and again by the unsettling impression that the moor itself was shifting under me. Dawn at last came pale and slow, revealing the unicycle rimed with dew, a glinting relic amidst the wilderness.

Thus ends the ninth day and night. I have slept beneath open skies and feel bruised yet invigorated. England reveals itself differently when one accepts the Moors’ inhospitality; there is a grandeur in such experiences, a reminder that I am just a guest upon an older stage.

Entry the Eighth — 21st of May, 1873

The second week of my expedition began with a sky of ambiguous temper, grey with the promise of rain yet coy in its delivery. I departed Launceston in fair enough spirits, but scarcely had the church tower disappeared behind me than the heavens opened with the suddenness of an End of Act One stage curtain.

Rain! Not the genial drizzle that can be refreshing for the athlete like myself, but a veritable cascade, as though some celestial sluice had been loosed upon me. Within minutes I was drenched, my notes dissolving in their case, my spectacles a misted blur. The Steam Unicycle, though valiant, is ill-suited to aquatic deluge: the boiler, designed for orderly vapour emission, grew querulous. Steam and rain engaged in open quarrel, each hissing louder than the other, until I feared I had invented not a vehicle but a travelling thundercloud.

Worse still, the road became a ribbon of mud. My wheel slipped and lurched, threatening mutiny at every yard. Twice I dismounted to push, and once I was obliged to enlist the aid of a passing carter, who, after hauling me uphill, remarked with rustic candour: “You’d be drier in a coffin.” I could not dispute the logic; I gave him a sketch of his horse in gratitude.

How I wished I had access to my studio/workshop, for I immediately invented a hat cum water collector, which would both prevent the rain landing on my person, whilst also directing it, through various tubes and some sort of funnel, to the boiler itself. I imagined the device, made of tempered brass, replenishing the boiler automatically. How wonderful would it be? To turn affliction into advantage—what greater aim could invention pursue?

But I only had a motley selection of tools on my person, and none of the raw materials needed to build what I had christened the Bromley Precipitation Boiler Refiller, so I had to face the weather sans such a device. By afternoon the storm abated, leaving me sodden but unbroken. I paused at a wayside inn near Lifton, where the landlady insisted I remove my boots before entering, lest I transport half of Devonshire mud onto her floor. I sat by the fire, garments steaming, the unicycle itself propped in the corner, exhaling vapours like some great drenched walrus. Other patrons regarded it with a mixture of awe and suspicion; one ventured that it resembled “a bishop’s mitre turned inside out.” I sketched the comparison hastily, for it pleased me.

By nightfall I had pressed on to Okehampton, the road made tolerable by the drying wind. The moor rose about me in sombre majesty, and for a brief interval the sunset poured itself across the wet earth, gilding puddles into molten mirrors. Even soaked, scratched, and weary, I felt a painter’s gratitude for such a vision.

Thus concludes the eighth day: rain-battered yet resolute. The unicycle and I learn, it seems, not merely to endure the elements but to quarrel with them, and perhaps in time, to collaborate.

Entry the Seventh — 20th of May, 1873

The bells of Bodmin struck six as I coaxed the Steam Unicycle into motion, their peals sounding like benedictions, though perhaps also a little like warnings. The morning was clear, the air sharpened by the scent of moorland heather and distant peat fires. I confess, I felt optimistic.

Yet optimism is so often the prelude to vexation. The road across Bodmin Moor, though broad in prospect, is riddled with stones and deceptive hollows. My wheel bounded like a hare, while the boiler rattled in protest. Sheep scattered before me as if I were some advancing iron shepherd. At one point, a startled ram lowered its head as though to challenge my one-wheeled contraption; happily, it thought better of the duel, and I avoided what might have been the world’s first recorded collision between steam and ovine.

Mid-morning brought an encounter with a tinker, leading a cart of pots and kettles. His face bore the soot of a man who lives by fire and metal, and so we fell into immediate fraternity. He inspected the unicycle with a practised eye and declared: “A kettle, indeed, but with pretensions.” I laughed, but he continued, more kindly: “Still, it moves, and that is more than most men’s dreams accomplish.” He gave me a rivet of his own making, which he asked me to pocket as a talisman.

The day’s true calamity occurred near Launceston. A loose strap permitted my coal-shovel to fall from my shoulders across the path of the wheel, entangling itself in the spokes of my auxiliary gearing. The result was a most unceremonious tumble – I was flung into a patch of nettles. I emerged stung, scratched, and, I daresay, resembling a man at odds with the natural order. A kindly milkmaid, witnessing my plight, applied a poultice of dock leaves, while remarking that “perhaps God intended us for two feet, not one wheel.” I thanked her, though inwardly resolved that divinity surely approves of experiment, else why place iron and steam within our grasp?

By evening I had limped as far as Launceston proper, where the unicycle rests in a coach-house, its boiler drained and its dignity somewhat bruised. My dignity has suffered likewise. Yet as I set pen to paper, I find myself smiling: for each fall teaches me more of balance than any successful mile.

Thus ends the seventh day. A week completed; a nation yet to cross. I wonder, even now, whether the journey is less towards John o’Groats than towards some reconciliation between folly and vision.

From the Journals of Basil Bromley

Entry the Sixth — 19th of May, 1873

I quitted Truro under a sky of polished pewter, the air sharp with that peculiar tang which seems a herald of rain yet seldom fulfils its promise. My landlady bade me farewell with a look of mingled pity and suspicion, as though releasing a lunatic back upon the roads.

The journey north proved alternately exhilarating and exasperating. The Steam Unicycle, freshly stoked, displayed a most eager temper, fairly bounding forward with each stroke of the piston. Yet the roads conspired against speed: lanes so narrow that hedges brushed my elbows, ruts that might swallow a cartwheel, gradients that mocked all calculation. I advanced in fits, sometimes at a clip that startled even myself, sometimes reduced to near immobility, as if the machine sulked at the indignities imposed upon it.

At one such pause, whilst replenishing the boiler from a roadside pump, I fell into discourse with a schoolmaster, black-coated and bespectacled, who was walking to an appointment in a neighbouring parish. He examined my unicycle gravely, then declared: “Sir, you illustrate to perfection the triumph of absurdity over reason.”

I thanked him, observing that reason, when universally obeyed, yields nothing novel; absurdity, at least, grants us surprise. He bowed—ironically, I think—and walked on, leaving me with the distinct sense that I had been simultaneously mocked and praised.

Shortly thereafter, I was beset by a gang of boys who followed me for half a mile, chanting, “Silly Billy!” and “Tea-kettle! Tea-kettle!” Their chorus, though vexing, lent a kind of rhythm to the journey, so that I almost regretted when they dropped away at the edge of their village. I reflected that perhaps the true measure of an invention lies not in its utility but in the songs it provokes.

By late afternoon I reached the approaches of Bodmin, and here calamity nearly struck. Descending a hill, I discovered the brake-lever reluctant to engage. The machine gathered a head of steam with alarming alacrity, and I began to fear that my epitaph would be written in a fast approaching hedgerow. By some providence, the gradient softened before disaster, and I coasted to a halt with only a scorched glove and a heart pounding like a trip-hammer. I spent an hour tightening the mechanism.

Tonight I lodge in Bodmin. The innkeeper, a genial fellow, begged me to demonstrate the machine to his assembled patrons in the yard. They cheered lustily when it emitted a jet of steam, though one man cried out that I ought to patent it for use against invading Frenchmen. I retire, therefore, both amused and weary, my contraption stabled once again among creatures who surely despise it.

Thus concludes the sixth day. I feel myself, despite bruises and jeers, drawing ever deeper into the strange companionship of this single wheel. It may yet kill me—but I feel more and more certain that I will survive.

Entry the Fifth — 18th of May, 1873

I departed Redruth in a drizzle that seemed less rain than an all-encompassing mist. Cornwall, I have discovered, prefers to blur its outlines: hedgerows melt into field, cottages into fog, and even my Steam Unicycle emerged from its own vapour like a beast half-imagined.

The roads proved treacherous—muddy and narrow, hemmed in by high granite walls which amplified every hiss and clank of my contraption, so that I travelled within a perpetual echo chamber. At one point a farmer’s wife, hearing my approach, dropped her basket of turnips and declared me a herald of the Judgement. I reassured her that, on the contrary, I was simply an artist travelling north; yet she refused to collect her produce until I was entirely out of sight.

Near Scorrier I was overtaken by a cavalry officer on a chestnut horse. He slowed to my pace, observing me with the amused severity of one accustomed to command. “You ride a dangerous thing, sir,” he said. “It lacks the honesty of a horse.”

I replied that honesty may also be found in brass and piston, if one only listens to its rhythm. He considered this, then spurred his mount into a gallop, calling back over his shoulder: “I should still prefer a horse.” I felt oddly triumphant.

As I rode, my clothes damp from the rain, I pondered the inadequacy of current methods for drying one’s clothing whilst travelling. Rain and mist render garments perpetually damp. In a flash I had conceived of the Bromley Drying Apparatus—a waistcoat lined with narrow copper tubes, through which exhaust steam from the unicycle might be channelled, gently warming the fabric. One could arrive at any inn not merely unsoaked but positively fragrant with heated linen – though it might have a slight coally tang. I shall look into getting a patent when I return to London after this journey.

By late afternoon the drizzle gave way to sun, sudden and theatrical, revealing the countryside in vivid colour: gorse ablaze with yellow, mine chimneys rising like ancient obelisks. I paused to sketch one such scene, the unicycle at rest beside me, puffing like a contemplative dragon. Passers-by seemed to accept the tableau, as though artist and machine were now inseparable.

This evening I lie in a humble inn at Truro. My landlady insisted on polishing part of the unicycle, mistaking its brass chimney for a candlestick. She jumped when it hissed at her touch. I apologised, though not without a certain pride.

The road north beckons with a strange intimacy: each day seeming harder than the one before.

From the Journals of Basil Bromley, Artist and Mechanician

Entry the Fourth — 17th of May, 1873

The morning at Hayle began with a misapprehension. The inn’s ostler, charged with feeding the horses, took it upon himself to “water” my Steam Unicycle as well, pouring half a pail into the firebox whilst I still slept. I was awakened by a terrific hiss, as if a hundred serpents had invaded my chamber. Rushing down in my nightshirt, I found the contraption venting indignation like a Roman fountain, the ostler nowhere to be seen. Mercifully, no damage was done, though I now comprehend that men of good intention may yet be the greatest danger to invention.

Once properly fed with coal and replenished with water (this time under my own supervision), I set off along the road to Redruth. The air was sharp with the tang of tin workings, those yawning scars of Cornish industry where engines puff more diligently, though less elegantly, than my own. Several miners, emerging from their shift, beheld my machine and declared it a “travelling boiler.” One wagered I could not manage the hill ahead; when I did, he saluted me with the grin of a man bested but secretly pleased to have been so.

Alas, triumph was not unalloyed. On a steep descent, the unicycle, giddy with gravity, attained such speed that my hat was carried off into a hedge. I dared not stop to retrieve it until the bottom of the hill, whereupon I was assisted by a Methodist preacher, who, having plucked it from the brambles, inquired sternly whether my machine was “something a gentleman should be riding.” I replied that it was of great design, and was both natural and inevitable. He frowned, yet conceded that locomotion by a single wheel might serve as a parable of faith: all balance dependent on unseen forces. I promised to consider the matter further.

By late afternoon I reached Redruth proper, soothed by the hospitality of a kindly widow who offered lodging in exchange for a sketch of her deceased husband’s likeness, rendered from a small daguerreotype. I laboured at it by lamplight, the unicycle stabled once more among horses, who regard it with a sort of dull resignation, as though acknowledging a strange cousin in brass.

Thus concludes this day’s travel: slower in distance, richer in conversation. Each mile upon the Steam Unicycle seems to provoke speculation not merely upon machinery, but upon the very order of things—faith, industry, art, and the fragile tether that keeps them all in balance.

Entry the Third — 16th of May, 1873

The inn at St Just provided a breakfast whose quantity far outstripped its refinement—eggs of dubious lineage, rashers of bacon both heroic in girth and sullen in texture, and bread with the constitution of a paving stone. Yet, fuelled by these provisions, I set forth, the Steam Unicycle steaming with an eagerness that seemed almost companionable.

The road today proved less forgiving. Cornwall is a land perpetually folding and unfolding itself, hills that rise like the backs of great beasts, valleys that deepen with no notice. Here the unicycle displayed both its genius and its perversity. Ascents required me to feed the boiler with an almost indecent zeal, the pistons clattering like an impatient drummer as I, with some difficulty, pulled coal from the bag upon my back. Descents, by contrast, induced a swiftness verging on the criminal. At one point I passed a mail-coach at such velocity that the postilion dropped his bugle in alarm. I attempted to wave, but balance and speed were both troubling and staying aboard my wheeled- contraption demanded all of me; my greeting was reduced to a wild oscillation of limbs which he may well have interpreted as lunacy.

Children continue to be my most enthusiastic audience. Near Pendeen, a whole troop ran beside me, chanting “Steam wheel! Steam wheel!” like acolytes at some new, brass-clad religion. I considered sermonising on the union of art and machinery, but feared the difficult incline might upend me mid-homily. Better to allow mystery its reign.

By afternoon I, or rather my machine, had issues. I stopped at a smithy to secure a minor repair—the tightening of a valve that had grown insolent with vibration. The blacksmith, a taciturn man, struck the iron as if he were chastising it. At length, after hardly speaking, he said in a loud voice, “This will kill you.” Then, after a pause, “But I should like to see how.” I laughed at his witticism – he just handed me the bill.

I end the day lodged in a modest inn at Hayle. The unicycle rests in the corner of my chamber, glinting faintly in the candlelight, like a coiled animal awaiting command. My limbs ache, my ears ring with the hiss of steam, yet my spirits remain untamed. The road, if it may be called that, has begun to write itself beneath my wheel.