EPISODE 26
Tracking Lawrence of Arabia
Journey to the Middle East with Miles Spencer as he unravels the fascinating story of T.E. Lawrence’s early life and adventurous spirit. Discover how Lawrence’s youthful bicycle tours through France, meticulously documenting medieval castles and cathedrals, foreshadowed his legendary role in the Arab Revolt. Miles, along with his friend Wells Jones, retraced Lawrence’s wartime trek across the Arabian Desert from Jeddah to Damascus, sharing their own experiences of navigating the challenging landscape and encountering the welcoming culture. This episode delves into Lawrence’s complex character, his deep understanding of the region, and the historical context of his pivotal role in World War I. While not a “bicycle tourist” in the conventional sense, Lawrence’s life on two wheels embodied many of the same principles that drive cyclists to explore the world by bike today: a thirst for adventure, a desire for self-sufficiency, and a means for testing one’s endurance limits.
Episode Transcript
Miles: By his own documentation, and this is a consistent theme, right? He tells the stories, therefore he writes the history. And in about 50 days throughout the South of France, he bicycled Miles Spencer talking about T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia, a complex figure whose role in the Arab Revolt during World War I cemented his place in history. However, it was Lawrence’s understanding of Arab languages, cultures, and traditions that inspired Miles and his good friend Wells Jones to track Lawrence. They did so both figuratively, in history books, and literally, by trekking 1,100 miles across the Arabian desert by camel, foot, and horseback.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello cycle touring enthusiasts! In this episode, for the first time, we sit down to talk to someone who is not a cycle touring enthusiast. Today’s guest, Miles Spencer, has devoted considerable time to studying Thomas Edward, or T. E., Lawrence, a multi-talented man with a passion for archaeology, languages, literature, cartography, and, notably, cycling. While not a “bicycle tourist” in the conventional sense, Lawrence’s life on two wheels embodied many of the same principles that drive cyclists to explore the world by bike today: a thirst for adventure, a desire for self-sufficiency, and the means of testing one’s endurance limit. Today’s episode is a great opportunity to learn more about a region that, for a variety of reasons, is both difficult to tour by bicycle and extremely relevant in global politics today. Our guide will be Miles Spencer, who, along with his friend Wells Jones, has written a historical fiction book based on their adventures, titled A Line in the Sand, in which lifelong friends Magnus and Finn follow the trail of clues left by Lawrence. Miles, thank you so much for being a guest on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist.
Miles: Well, thanks for having me on the podcast, Gabriel.
Gabriel: Let’s jump right into it because the thing that we want to talk about here, at least at the beginning, and what really caught my interest, is T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia. Why don’t you start us off by telling us how did you get interested in Lawrence of Arabia?
Miles: My interest in T. E. Lawrence was, after 9/11, I was just trying to piece together what might have been the motivations. I’m a curious guy, and I like to ask, “Who, what, why, where, when?” And I just really did not have any clear answers to that at all. And so I began reading this book, it’s called Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence. In that book, he details a trek he took from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Damascus, Syria, along with thousands of Bedouins in the Arab Revolt that culminated in what I was struck by was how well Lawrence, as a Westerner, seemed to understand the culture, the cuisine, and the climate, and so many things about that region. It was a far -off and distant land for me, and he was the first one to actually put it into context. And so when I finished that book, my good friend Wells Jones was coming through town. He’s former Navy Special Forces parachute rescue specialist. “So what are you reading?” I said, “Seven Pillars.” He said, “I just finished that.” “Well, what’d you think?” And just as I told you, seemed to understand the people there. “What do we do next?” “Let’s go!” That was the difference maker right there. And so we were lucky enough to get an invitation to Riyadh, and I gained a presentation to YPO there. That’s Young Presidents’ Organization. And they said, “Wow, that was fantastic. What else would you like?” “Well, we’d like to trek 1,100 miles from Jeddah to Damascus on camel, foot, and horseback.” They said, “Great, how can we help?” And that was the first time that we had experienced the welcoming of that region. And frankly, I think that we may have been the first ones outside of employees of ARAMCO or military that had shown up in Saudi Arabia. We just wanted to understand. This story goes way, way back from T.E. Lawrence and his original bicycle trek through France, which fascinated me as well.
Gabriel: You’ve covered a lot of ground there. I have a lot of follow-up questions. First of all, I think one of the interesting connections to this show is that Lawrence… should I call him Lawrence of Arabia or T.E. Lawrence, or what should I call him?
Miles: You know, interestingly enough, he was born a Chapman. He was born out of wedlock. He took the name Lawrence. He became Aurens in Saudi Arabia. He became Lawrence of Arabia after his death. And he also changed his name to Ross because he was so famous as Lawrence, he couldn’t stand it any longer. So I don’t think he would mind if you called him anything.
Gabriel: Okay, well, let’s call him Lawrence then. As a very young man, Lawrence decided, and that’s what is the initial connection to the show, that he wanted to see parts of, at first England, and then I think later on France and even further, by bicycle. I really want to hear more about the trip that you took a bit later, but I want to start with Lawrence and his bicycling exploits. Do you know how he got into it?
Miles: By his own documentation, and this is a consistent theme, right? He tells the stories, therefore he writes the history. And in about France, he bicycled 2,500 miles. And what he was after was the medieval castles and cathedrals and abbeys, which became his senior thesis at Oxford. And so this trip involved every major medieval fortification that was built in France. And what he eventually did was compare them to the castles of the Levant and the Middle East, which we went to visit. I’ve been to the castles of France as well. But what I found to be interesting is that, and this is something that’s very consistent about Lawrence all the way through, he was 18, 19 years old when he took this 1908 bike. Probably didn’t have a gear system. Probably was not made of titanium. These were 35-pound steel frames, okay? I mean, not a modern bicycle. Maybe flip- flop hubs that allowed him to go to a flywheel. Rod brakes, right? This was basically steel on steel plus your foot pedals. But they did have pneumatic tires. They had been invented by then. But they weren’t racing tires, nor designed to go over cobblestones and scree, and bramble and you name it. And what it brings me to is this guy is probably one of the toughest human beings I’ve ever read about. His ability to subordinate pain and discomfort in exchange for what he wanted was absolutely amazing. This plays out later and later in his stories in the Middle East. But it began, perhaps, with his bicycle trip through France. Almost masochistic in terms of his stoicism.
Gabriel: Well, I love your description of the bicycle and it’s very important to try to picture yourself more than 100 years ago trying to do a bike tour on the technology of the time. So I love that you went into the details of it because it’s really easy to imagine him on some kind of gravel bicycle with disc brakes. But that is not what he had. And thank goodness for Dunlop, the Scotsman, who invented the pneumatic tires. Otherwise, he’d be riding on wooden tires.
Miles: Or worse.
Gabriel: His purpose was to see these abbeys, castles, for his university work. And then it just happened to be that the bike was the way to go. Do you think that that’s fair?
Miles: I hesitate to ascribe a certain motivation to Lawrence, aside from the thought that he wanted to turn in a good paper and he had a lot of castles to see. He was curious and he was fascinated. And so, remember, it’s 50 days. You have summer break, right? Probably won’t get around to all these castles on a budget. He had none. He had no support. So bicycles, among other things, are cheap compared to trains and automobiles, et cetera. Yeah. I think it was practical to get around that way and efficient and speedy. And it also played into his physicality, which was prodigious.
Gabriel: Yeah. If you’re willing to endure the pain, then bicycling is a great mode of transport to this day. So this is great. Through the bicycle, we’re getting to learn a little bit about Lawrence’s character, which is going to become very important later on in his life, when he goes on to much bigger things than just working on a university degree. So what happens next? It sounds like he’s leading a fairly normal life, but then World War I comes around?
Miles: World War I comes around. He turns in a heck of a paper.
Gabriel: Good.
Miles: And there’s a man named Hogarth who runs a museum named the Ashmolean, which is in Oxford as well. And Hogarth collects artifacts from different places in Middle East, very Indiana Jones. And so he sends Lawrence, who was also very facile with languages, right? Knew four or five at the time, ended up speaking a dozen dialects of Arabic by the time he got there. So he sent him to, at the time, Mesopotamia, modern- day Iraq, to a dig named Carchemish. He meets a woman named Gertrude Bell there, who is eventually going to run the Iraq under Sir Percy Cox. Lawrence, amongst as many talents, becomes a cartographer. He draws maps. He draws maps beautifully. He paints maps beautifully. And so he was sent there first as an archaeologist, but he learns the language, he learns the people, he learns the customs, and then he’s sent back to draw maps. Now, if you’re going to go to war in the 19-teens, into a region that you have no idea what’s around that corner and who’s behind that mountain, it is best to have maps of same. This is Lawrence’s next quest, drawing maps. And so he knows the region intimately.
Gabriel: Is there already a military connection? Is he sort of an undercover agent here doing cartography?
Miles: He’s certainly not paid as such at first, right? He’s just collecting things for the museum. I mean, no more than Indiana Jones was collecting things for the museum back home. His expenses were covered, I’ll say that. I would say by the time he’s drawing maps, he is attached to the Cairo office, which ran things in the Middle East for the British. So his map making takes on more and more importance there, to the point where, if I can take a half step forward, because of his familiarity, he is asked to go back into the desert. This is now in the Red Sea in a place called the Hejaz, which is the mountainous region on the western side of what is now the Saudi Peninsula. And he went to the Hashemite king, Hussein, who controlled Mecca and Medina, their important religious destinations, and recruited his son, Faisal, to lead a revolt against the Ottoman Turks who were aligned with the Germans who were fighting the French and the British and Europe. It was him, getting these disparate troops of Bedouins to all come together in unison and fight against the Turks. He did that with some very, very shrewd tactics.
Gabriel: This background is super. It brings us to your trip. You had mentioned at the beginning that you and your friend Wells decided to go, but then you were fortunate enough to get some sort of a sponsorship or an invitation from Saudi Arabia, it sounds like.
Miles: That’s correct. I had started businesses in the past. I actually hosted a television show in the US on public television. I had a book that was marginally popular amongst entrepreneurs, MoneyHunt.
Gabriel: And the TV show was also based on this book, MoneyHunt?
Miles: So MoneyHunt goes back to 1997. I hosted the television show where entrepreneurs came on, pitched their ideas. We gave them thumbs up or thumbs down and eventually a check if they were good enough. Eventually that became known as Dragon’s Den. Eventually that became known as Shark Tank.
Gabriel: Of course, Shark Tank is famous.
Miles: I in turn stole it from someone else by the name of Bernard Tapie, who hosted a show called The Entrepreneurs, which I used to watch as a student in France.
Gabriel: Oh.
Miles: In order to learn French and business French. So all of that’s worth one cup of coffee at Starbucks and that’s about it.
Gabriel: By the way, Miles, Bernard Tapie has a cycling connection. Did you know that?
Miles: Yes, he does. What is that? Was it a cycling team?
Gabriel: Very good.
Miles: Yeah, was it Credit Lyonnais, or that’s who he fought with, right?
Gabriel: Credit Lyonnais’s the sponsor of the yellow jersey. They didn’t have a team, but among Bernard Tapie’s many businesses was La Vie Claire, a chain of health products. And they sponsored one of the most successful teams of all time with Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond.
Miles: Here we go. Well done. A good tie-in. Money Hunt found it’s way into the hands of YPO Riyadh, Young Presidents’ Organization, and we wrangled an invitation to speak. Wells was my security. We got an extra seat. So that was the talk on the book. And they were truly, truly gracious and thankful that we had even arrived as Americans and just asked, “What else could we do for you?” And that’s where the fun began. Right.
Gabriel: So Wells was your security. And I assume he’s a good friend of yours, from way back.
Miles: We were good friends the day we met. This is the same in the book. The two characters, Magnus and Finn, as well as our own actual lives. You have these people that you meet and just kind of seems like you don’t. And for a lifetime, the first time we met, that was my relationship with Wells. So by that time, we had been doing adventures together for at least a decade, but we just amped it up a notch. So there’s a deep trust between us. We had complementary skills. We had different ways of looking at things. So we’re a good team.
Gabriel: So you and Wells get this invitation and you said at the beginning, it was by camel, on foot, and by horseback that you traveled this distance. Since you were following in Lawrence’s footsteps, this was from Jeddah to Damascus?
Miles: That’s correct. I will add some nice Toyota FJ jeeps in support of our efforts, so we always had that back-up. Our first default was always take foot or take camel. So we began in Jeddah, which is a port town on the western coast of the Saudi Peninsula on the Red Sea. We went along the Red Sea to towns of Al Wajh and Yanbo. And these were actually fortress towns that Lawrence used. As a matter of fact, there is one story in the book from about Chapter Four, where we go to the house that was being restored, believed to have been Lawrence’s headquarters when he was there. We were presented, probably the most precious gift of the many gifts we got in the area, was a tile from the floor. We compliment these beautiful tiles and wonder, “Wow, would Lawrence have stepped on these tiles himself?” And immediately, a spare tile was produced and it’s like, “We want you to have this as a gift.” And I turned to Wells, just a little look. We had to accept this. We also realized, how are we going to take this with us? Eventually, we broke it into pieces so that we can reassemble it later as a tile. But that presented its own set of challenges with a tile backed with cement broken into pieces while crossing borders on foot. There were a lot of questions about what this actually was.
Gabriel: Yeah, there were some tests that were done on the tile, probably.
Miles: There were tests, there were tests that were done. But that was Al Wajh and Yanbo. Aqaba, which is famous for the battle. Nobody would ever come through the desert to attack, and that’s what T.E. Lawrence did.
Gabriel: Aqaba is a city on the Red Sea in modern-day Jordan. During World War I, the strategically vital port was controlled by the Ottoman Turks. In 1917, T.E. Lawrence, acting without official British orders, orchestrated a daring attack on Aqaba. Since the port was heavily defended against attacks by sea, Lawrence led a combined force of Arab tribesmen on a grueling 600-mile overland journey through the Nafud desert. This surprise attack, which resulted in Aqaba’s capture with minimal casualties, established Lawrence as a bold leader with a keen understanding of desert warfare.
Miles: And then to Wadi Rum, got to know some camels up close and personal. Aleon and Garmont, the names of the camels of Wells and I, we still remember that.
Gabriel: You mentioned the names of the camels, and it makes me really think, what do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of travel by camel versus by bicycle? Because many people also name their bicycles and develop an intimate bond. So I bet you you haven’t gotten this question before, but what do you think?
Miles: That’s a first, but I’m gonna go with it. I think a bicycle would not do well in sand. So assuming that, camels and bicycles, I mean, they can travel at perhaps similar speeds over great, great distances. Camels are ideally suited for the desert. Their eyelashes are so long, they mesh together in a sandstorm. The pads of the feet are like these giant inflatable cushions you would see on someone’s headrest in first class in an airplane. They are double-jointed, so they can actually kneel down to where they’re about the size of a medium dog, and so that enables a rider to hop on fairly easily. There is a funny story about this, because once a rider’s weight is in the saddle, that puts pressure on their knees, and they rise immediately to relieve that pressure. So when one is mounting a camel, do not touch the heel of your lead foot on any part of the saddle, or the camel will think you are a bord, and suddenly your heel will be at 10 feet, and the rest of you will be at ground level. Wow! It’s great to see rookies try to get on camels. Don’t think you have that issue with bicycles, unless of course you are in one of those stirrups in the bike, and you can’t take yourself out. I guess that will be somewhat similar.
Gabriel: And what about personality-wise? Is there a bond that develops, or can any camel be with any rider?
Miles: No, camels absolutely develop a bond with the rider. So if I attempted to get aboard Aleon, it would hiss at me. Think of the same time. Garmont would kneel down for me and let me abord at any time. So yes, they are very colonial and jealous of each other. So they are true treasures of the desert.
Gabriel: So another disadvantage of camels, jealousy. So we’ve got a few, but I guess they’re all outweighed by the huge advantage that they do a lot better on sand than bicycles.
Miles: Yeah. Another difference is that we both roll at the same speed, and they both earn their keep and deserve names. In a pinch, well, in a pinch, you can drink the milk of the camel. We’ve had it, not very good, but it will sustain you. And in a bout of severe hunger, you can slaughter the camel and eat it.
Gabriel: Oh, gosh, okay. That’s extreme.
Miles: I’ve had it. It does not taste like chicken. But our hosts were very proud to present it.
Gabriel: We talked about the differences between camels and bicycles, but possibly one similarity, saddle sores.
Miles: We’d been in the desert riding camels for probably a week straight. And even though Garmont was a great mount, the camel and saddle that I was assigned to perhaps was not ideally suited in my rich American backside. There was a spot which I did not know I had. We were offered to bathe. There was a cistern of water up on the roof that had been heated by the sun. You uncinched a hose, get quite warm water. It was very nice until the soap hit my backside. And the soap was probably made with lye. Wow!
Gabriel: Yowzers!
Miles: I was very happy to be done with Garmont for a while and just on foot.
Gabriel: Yeah, I can imagine. And then what about gear? Bicycle tourists, usually very interested in equipment and also traveling light is important. And I’m sure you were traveling light. Can you tell a little bit about gear that you had?
Miles: Absolutely. Again, we did our research before going. We limited ourselves to one backpack apiece, a small backpack, it’s a trekking backpack. So these were Osprey backpacks that we did sew a false bottom into.
Gabriel: A false bottom?
Miles: I’ll tell you about that in a minute. But in terms of what we wore, surprisingly, more dark clothes than light because locals actually wear dark clothes. And you’d think, well, that’s just, you know, dark clothes just absorb the heat, but the reality is they blend in a little bit better. You know, you don’t show up in khakis and whites. So we did not look like British tourists from 100 years ago. I looked a little more local, did our own laundry maybe once a week, but it was one and a half changes of clothes. Good socks, good shoes. Really important. But we also had some other gear. Again, the false bottom. We intended, and we did journal each day. And so we had a TOUGHBOOK, which is basically waterproof, sandproof, sealable laptop. We had a solar panel that actually folded up into the size of a greeting card, put it in our back pocket, but it powered the entire electronic system that we had. We had a BGAN transmitter, which picked up a satellite and allowed us to upload all of our images, all of our movies, all of note- taking to the cloud before it was called a cloud. And so each day we began with no data on us whatsoever. It’s a security consideration. The last security consideration was a PLB, what’s a personal locator beacon, which was strapped next to our most private parts, such that when we approached someone we didn’t know or even a checkpoint, we had the ability to actually engage the beacon. It would signal to alert people that we’re in distress. Response time would be 25 to 30 minutes. That’s a heck of a long time as you’ve been spirited off by someone that you don’t want to be hanging out with, but at least against them at fixed location. This is before GPS on the phone. And it would also tie to our kidnap and ransom policy. Never had to use it, but that was our gear.
Gabriel: Okay, but how do you get a response time? I know you said 25 to 30 minutes is a long time, but if I’m on a bike tour somewhere and I have a problem, my response time is infinite. Nobody’s gonna come and save me. So you’ve prearranged with whom? Who is responding?
Miles: Well, we had purchased an insurance policy and paid for that.
Gabriel: Okay, so that’s something you can buy.
Miles: You can buy.
Gabriel: Wow.
Miles: Yeah.
Gabriel: Interesting.
Miles: It seemed a good idea at the time and that was money well spent. We never had to use it, but all of these things, Gabriel, they gave us a peace of mind that allowed us to experience things with our own eyes. We were well prepared. We were well trained.
Gabriel: You had mentioned that Wells had a military background. Did you also have a military background?
Miles: I had to make my bed every morning. My grandfather was a rifleman in the First World War. He must have run his household like a military operation, because by the time my father rolled around and was parenting me, he was basically taking it out on us.
Gabriel: Okay.
Miles: As compensation for what his dad did to him. I grew up in a military household without any of the benefits.
Gabriel: Okay. All right. You seem to have an approach that reminds me of a military way of doing things, at least in terms of your preparation for this trip.
Miles: I will take that as a compliment.
Gabriel: Let’s pick up where we left off. You were in Wadi Rum, I believe.
Miles: Wadi Rum is the most beautiful landscape. You’ve seen the movie Dune or Star Wars’ desert scenes. Some of them are actually either based on or filmed in Wadi Rum. You feel like you’re there. Temperature range… we experienced basically 130 degrees.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s almost like 50 degrees celcius or something. Phew.
Miles: Yeah. It is. It is. Yeah. So we didn’t do much trekking, riding during the daytime. Would be in the dawn hours or in the evening, slept in the desert. At lunchtime, we’d literally find some shade anywhere. Shade meant maybe 25, felt like a cool mountain stream.
Gabriel: It’s all relative.
Miles: It’s all… it really is all relative. I do remember getting out of the desert, going to our guide’s home where he hosted us for dinner, and that was the most wonderful dinner I ever had. You’d probably consider it to be the most everyday pedestrian dinner you’d ever served, but it was wonderful to experience that.
Gabriel: If you wouldn’t mind going into a bit of detail about, what was this meal?
Miles: That particular meal was cooked by Bedouins in the desert in Jordan, and so you have to understand this is a humble fire. These are people of humble means, but they have the great honor to them of hosting two Americans that want to learn about their culture. It probably was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We began with some fruits that they had gathered. So this dates, some almonds. We sat, and when I say we, these are men, exclusively. Women prepare the food, women eat afterwards, women eat separately. In their culture, they’re not part of this meal. We sit in a circle because the serving dish is a giant circle. We rest an arm on a pillow, typically be the left arm, because one only eats with the right hand. In that culture, when one goes to the men’s room, one cleans up with the left hand, and so using the left hand in a meal causes tremendous feedback.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Miles: Rice boiled in butter forms the exterior circle of the dish. We happen to have a goat from the barbecue. One would make the ball almost like a sushi ball, right? Like nigiri, with your fingers, and then rub it through the carcass and pull off some meat. That went into the mouth in one bite, just like sushi. The spices were always earthy spices that really give a lot of flavors, especially smoky flavors, which they love. And they would offer to Wells and I, the choice pieces of meat, which were typically eyeballs.
Gabriel: All eyes were on you.
Miles: And other balls.
Gabriel: Oh boy.
Miles: You just got to say, yeah, when that meal is gone, and typically it would be the only meal of the day, and perhaps the only two days, you’d be in a food coma. Amazing. We write about food and even include recipes in the books. I think it is an important part of culture, including describing that dinner, which was wonderful.
Gabriel: How does it work in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom? I know that there’s that movie from the it ages ago. I don’t remember, I thought I liked it. But I don’t know how that plays into your track, the movie, the seven pillars of wisdom. How does that all work together?
Miles: Let’s move backwards and forwards from the movie, which won Oscars, a bag full of them. And it’s a three- hour movie, by the way. Peter O’Toole’s six foot something and T. E. Lawrence was five foot barely anything, but they made it work. It is a glorification of his story, but based on history and a true story. So if you don’t insist on facts ruining a ripping yarn, as they say in England, then Lawrence of Arabia is a perfect place to start. Lawrence himself began with something called 27 articles. And this was while he was writing the dispatches while recruiting the Bedouins in the Hejaz, reporting back to Cairo. And he realized a very important fact. He who writes the dispatches writes history. There’s no other source of information whatsoever. So Lawrence, like perhaps Napoleon a century ago, he controlled the news. When the war broke out, he kept a journal and eventually wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And it was a recounting of the Arab Revolt, which ostensibly at that time the Turks had made it down to Medina, just north of Mecca, which is slightly north of Jeddah, but hadn’t made it all the way down. They had a railroad and that railroad became very important because in my opinion, that is where Lawrence single-handedly invented guerrilla warfare. You have Turks that are looking to protect a long line of railway. And you had hundreds and thousands of hectares or acres of desert around it, which they could not guard all of it. And so Lawrence realized that little attacks that caused some damage and created some doubt and some fear in the people trying to defend them and then escaping into a desert like a vapor… he literally wrote the book on guerrilla warfare. Didn’t invent the term, it’s Spanish, but in my mind, invented guerrilla warfare. Seven Pillars of Wisdom recounts this trek from Jeddah. The difference in his trek in mind was that he had weapons, and I brought none. The promise… and this is a promise that Lawrence conveyed to Faisal, who was running the Arab revolt. If you can pull together the other disparate Bedouin tribes, you can help us fight the Turks and you can arrive in Damascus. First, you will have a kingdom that encompasses all of this, one pan-Arabic kingdom. That’s the promise. That, and some gold coins, got him going. The problem was this. There was a gentleman named Sykes and another named Picot in a club in London and a club in Paris that had made a little secret agreement, all the Sykes-Picot Agreement. And in it, they carved up the Middle East like a piece of cake when the war was over. But they didn’t tell anyone, and least of which Lawrence. And so on the one hand, there’s this implicit promise that if you cooperate and help the English, you’ll get all this. On the other hand, you’ve been sold down river already. Right? I mean, who is the duplicitous double-dealer now?
Gabriel: Yeah.
Miles: So Lawrence, nevertheless at some point, gets news of this agreement. Indeed, upon arriving in Damascus, there was a congratulation and then some bad news.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Miles: So that is dealt with in the movie. This dealt with in the book. But it’s also the beginning of the end of Lawrence’s ability to hold it together psychologically. He had basically deceived an entire generation of peoples in an entire region.
Gabriel: Unknowingly?
Miles: Unknowingly at first. At some point, you know. In my opinion, he’s a good guy, but he wasn’t clean.
Gabriel: Okay.
Miles: And it was just a question of when do I tell this story? I surmise he felt bad about it. Surprise, surprise. A hundred years later, history repeats itself two weeks ago. A new crowd rolled into Damascus. They celebrated a free new year for the first time in decades. But now, the question of who will govern is, as they say in basketball in the US, a jump ball.
Gabriel: Yeah. Syria has been in the news recently, for sure.
Miles: We continued up through Jordan, a wonderful castle there named Kerak. This is where you’re getting a little tie-in of Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. His Crusader castles were very important to him. And what Crusader castles meant to the French, the Crusaders, the culture there. So to back up for a second. It became our belief that the first jihad, or declaration of war, was not 9/11. It was a thousand years prior. When Pope Clement in 1092 basically said, everyone in France is free to go on a journey to Jerusalem. And anyone you kill on the way, you’ve been absolved in advance by me. You’re good. This started, actually, with Jews and ended up with Arabs as well. But slaughter who you might, it’s all done for the church. You’ll be fine. And that began at Crusades. And the ones that provided the trade routes to the Crusades were the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitalier. And they created not only these great castles that you could stop over, it’s kind of like a rest stop on the highway now. They had, more or less, invented credit cards where you would donate your land to the Templars. And they would give you a debit system where you could eat your drink on the way all the way to Jerusalem. The fatality rate of a Crusade to Jerusalem, quite high. And so the lands were mostly owned by the Knights Templar. And so that caused an issue in France in terms of King being poor, Pope being poor and the Knights Templar having all the lands.
Gabriel: That’s clever.
Miles: That’s the sad story of the Knights Templar, and that is covered in the book. It is very important to understand that the French and those Crusades were critical in that route even to this day. And in 1918, when the Arab Revolt made it to Damascus, a French, basically said, look, we’ve been here for a thousand years. Go to Damascus, you can speak French as quickly as you can speak any other language. Lawrence correctly identified the fact that through the Crusades, through the castles, the French really had a direct connection to the Levant and to Jerusalem. So seeing those castles was very important to us. Kerak was one. There’s another one called Krak Chevaliers, the castle of the horse riders. That’s in Homs, Syria. They’re absolutely magnificent. Impenetrable. Yeah, we’ve spent time in Damascus as well, which is a fascinating town. There’s a wonderful chapter towards the end of the book, Chapter 12 or 13, it all covers the Damascus tie-ins between Christianity, Islam, and actually Judaism, found throughout the entire trip. Again, as a Westerner, it was a surprise.
Gabriel: You said that was a surprise, that there were these similarities?
Miles: It was. I grew up a Christian in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pretty tolerant and temperate Christianity in my family, I would say, but I did know plenty of Christians that were of the opinion that any other religion’s going to hell, right? Even the different sects of their own religion. And that’s how I grew up. It was shocking to me. We were in a town called Maghalsheb, which is in the northwestern quarter of Saudi Arabia. And that particular guide didn’t really have a tight handle on his English. This archaeological thing, which supposedly, he said, was occupied by Ibrahim, Harar, and Moshe, and a list of sound very familiar to me. You’re taking stories from the Bible, my Bible.” And he said, “Well, perhaps, but they’re also in the Quran.” Are you telling me that the prophets crossed between the two books? He said, “Well, call your friend in Jerusalem.” And I read through 12 of the prophets that he was talking about, and sure enough, they’re in the Torah. And at that moment, was driven home to point that our similarities, our commonalities, are more significant than our differences. These three religions that are supposedly at odds and at war with each other in this region, 90% of the stories and the topics and the locations are shared by all three.
Gabriel: You know who else appears in all three religions? Gabriel.
Miles: Yeah, well done.
Gabriel: Gabriel is in all three.
Miles: Yep, that is true.
Gabriel: He’s the messenger.
Miles: That’s right. The messenger of God.
Gabriel: Don’t shoot the messenger.
Miles: I was humbled in how little I knew. And I wondered how many other people in this world had grown up in this silo of belief in which their beliefs are right. There’s only one ticket to heaven, it’s our way. And the reality is my experience, Wells’ experience in that region, they have much more in common than we ever expected.
Gabriel: That’s also a theme that comes up with my guests on bicycle touring because oftentimes people who are touring will meet the locals and they’ll be treated very well and the locals will say, “Well, here everything is good, but over there, in the next place, oh, watch out, those people are thieves and they can’t be trusted.” And of course, they go on their trip and same thing, they experience hospitality and, “Oh, but watch out.” And so it goes the whole trip.
Miles: That’s a funny story. Just over the next hill. It reminds me one of the later chapters in the book, xxx Chapter 13 is set in Jerusalem. Obviously, this is a city that’s shared by Jews and Christians and Arabs. We had just returned, as the characters in the book and also us individually, had just returned from the 26 days on the other side, if you will. We’re a very nice hotel. And the concierge comes and says, “Well, where do you want to go? Here’s a map.” And then points at one quarter and says, “Watch yourself here. This is the Arab Quarter. Anything could happen.” Yeah, of course, she didn’t know where we had been, but we said, “Okay.”
Gabriel: Yeah, perfect. Cool. Now, I do want to spend a little bit of time talking about your book. You came back from your travels and the way you chose to turn your experiences into something bigger was through a book. But instead of making it a travelogue or a YouTube channel or something like that, you decided to write a historical fiction book. You and Wells are both credited as the authors. It’s called, A Line in the Sand.
Miles: It’s important to note that it is historical fiction because we deal with both 1918 and present day. Present day in this particular book is 2006. The reason for doing it was that just like Lawrence, we felt that Westerners, Americans did not have any context for the culture, the cuisine, the climate, and everything else about the Middle East. And we had experienced it ourselves, but writing a book about ourselves just didn’t seem quite right. There are two characters, named Magnus and Finn, who are based on myself and Wells, and they go through the adventures. And one of the benefits of historical fiction is, as my girl friend reminds me from time to time, I tell quite a story. And sometimes she can ruin it with her facts. It’s a good story. It’s based on some history.
Gabriel: Can you tell us a little bit about the plot? What is the tie-in to Lawrence in the story?
Miles: It’s very deep. The characters are forever Lawrence aficionados, not just Lawrence of Arabia, but the entire works. There is a grandmother, she’s a great cook, that they meet who happens to have some Lawrence memorabilia. One of those pieces of memorabilia is a time travel device, which they’re able to use to port themselves back to of the first scenes in which they do that is in the aforementioned Krak Chevaliers, where they see a young Englishman on a bicycle outside the castle, sketching same.
Gabriel: Nice.
Miles: They think they know who this is, and they think they know if they follow this guy, they will be able to trace a true story behind Seven Pillars and connect that to their journey. And so that’s the first time the young man on the bicycle shows up.
Gabriel: Interesting.
Miles: So they do use that device to drop in on Lawrence at critical moments and really lend the history up close and personal. But they’re very careful not to affect history.
Gabriel: When the time machine is introduced, that’s historical fiction.
Miles: I will say this Gabriel, we have filed a patent on the Cryptex Jambiya, which is the device that allows us to travel in time. No word on whether that’s been granted or not.
Gabriel: What was your prior art on this?
Miles: Yeah, that’s a good point. I was more focused on when has this been put into commercial use.
Gabriel: Yeah. Well, I don’t know if that company had showed up on your TV show with their new idea. I’m not sure. Thumbs up or thumbs down?
Miles: You’re immediately asked for a deom.
Gabriel: Exactly. That’s a good way to do it. It sounds like Magnus and Finn are on a quest to solve some kind of mystery. That’s part of the fun for the reader, isn’t it?
Miles: It is. It’s a quest of understanding, and it’s not worn in which, oh, get the magic ring in order to save the damsel and distress. Magnus and Finn seem to be curious and get sucked in gradually to these adventures. So I would not call it a mission because that suggests they have some outcome in mind, and the only outcome in mind they have is to be open, to be curious, and to seek understanding so they can bring it back to their people, right? And by people, I say the Western world.
Gabriel: Well, it sounds like a fascinating story for sure, and the time travel machine is an unusual and creative device for telling your story.
Miles: Thank you.
Gabriel: So I’m very curious.
Miles: I would add convenient device as well.
Gabriel: I like it.
Miles: Though I write the words in the book, when I listen to the Audible, which is narrated by Eduardo Ballerini, it doesn’t sound like anything I could have possibly written. His oration is so superior to my writing. It’s well worth considering listening to it, especially if you’re on a bicycle. The other thing I’d men- tion is that if you complete the book and you want more Magnus and Finn adventures, we’ve just finished our second one, which continues on some similar themes in a different part of the world. And that’ll be out in the spring, and that’s called Havana Familia.
Gabriel: Ah, so a Cuban connection.
Miles: That is correct. Through our books and through our stories, we’re able to help Westerners, Americans, know more about these places and empathize with the people that are underneath all this.
Gabriel: And is this new story also based on some travel that you and Wells made to Cuba?
Miles: Of course.
Gabriel: Silly question.
Gabriel: To find out more about the exciting adventures of Miles Spencer and Wells Jones, please review the show notes for links. As for T.E. Lawrence, it’s clear that his relationship with the bicycle transcended mere transportation. It was a tool for exploration, a means of escape, and even a machine for military reconnaissance. After the war, Lawrence returned to England, where he continued to ride bicycles and motorcycles extensively. Tragically, at age in a motorcycle accident after swerving off the road to avoid two boys riding bicycles.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Gabriel: Have you done much bicycling in your life?
Miles: I bicycle on a Peloton. That’s the device, not the actual pack itself.
Show Notes
A Line in the Sand by Miles Spencer and Wells Jones is sold on Amazon.