Lees and Clutterbuck · 1882 · road

The 1882 travelogue that Jerome K. Jerome is thought to have borrowed from six years later. Three young Englishmen - the Skipper, Esau and John - take two Canadian canoes to Norway for a summer of fishing and shooting, haul them across a country by cariole, sleigh, pony and back, and camp for two months at Lake Gjende. It is still in print in Norway.

1. 1
   London

   8 July. The Skipper crosses London in a four-wheeler with a Canadian canoe on the roof amid shouts of boat ahoy from the populace - and the station-master at King's Cross puts on a special low carriage to get it onto the train.

2. 2
   Hull

   They meet on the platform at ten at night, one canoe having travelled in a horse-box where a man at Doncaster asked if it was some new mak o' a coffin - and sail on the Angelo with three boxes of stores and seven rods.

3. 3
   Kristiansand

   11 July, six in the morning, and then on up the coast - the sea rough enough that members of the ship's congregation shoot out of the saloon during the service like Zazel out of her cannon.

4. 4
   Christiania

   Oslo, the Victoria Hotel, and two days buying jam, whisky, soap and Tauchnitz books - and failing to find anchovy paste, which Esau considers a camping necessity, in any shop in the town.

5. 5
   Eidsvoll

   13 July. Three hours by rail during which the guard inspects their tickets 425 times, until they wear out and are replaced with strawberry jam labels, which the guard finds perfectly satisfactory.

6. 6
   Lillehammer

   Up Lake Mjosa on the paddle steamer Skibladner with the canoes lashed to the paddle-boxes - fifty-five miles of the best Norwegian summer day, and dinner in the saloon with wild strawberries and cream.

7. 7
   Dalbakken

   14 July. Thirty-eight miles by cariole and then by stolkjaer as the road deteriorates, and the last six on foot - arriving at midnight to find four other travellers have taken every room and hung their socks out of the windows.

8. 8
   Espedalsvatnet

   The first camp, and the canoes are put in the water and promptly sink - they have dried in the sun and need soaking to swell the joints. The cruise proper begins here, down a chain of lakes with portages at the rapids.

9. 9
   Olstappen

   20 July, after a week of rain that soaks everything they own - down past Bredsjo by sleigh when the river proves unrunnable, and a camp on the Vinstra with a hundred-foot waterfall upstream that is on no map.

10. 10
    Fly Saeter

    23 July. Up out of the forest onto the fjeld with three ponies, three sleighs, two canoes and a following of laughing villagers - ten miles in eleven hours, and nothing broken, which they regard as a triumph.

11. 11
    Sikkildalen

    Four miles in nine hours over ground the authors say would disgrace a Metropolitan Vestry - and camp between the two lakes, three thousand feet up, above the pine forest and out of decent firewood.

12. 12
    Besse Saeter

    28 July. Over the Sikkildal pass with a man carrying each canoe on his back up the mountain, and down to Sjodalsvatnet - and a hut where the Tronhuus family feed them trout, fladbrod and the best coffee in Norway.

13. 13
    Gjende

    1 August, the opening of the reindeer season, and the camp in Memurudalen on the lake they have crossed a country to reach - a summer of trout, ptarmigan and reindeer, and the stretch that made the book famous.

14. 14
    Russvatnet

    Rus Lake, over the ridge, with a stone hut at Gloptind and the canoes hauled up to it - where the biggest stalks of the season happen and the weather turns, and one of them nearly drowns going through a rapid.

15. 15
    Bjolstad

    Homeward in September, down through Heidal to an old farm with a courtyard of buildings four hundred years old - the first roof and proper bed since July, and the end of the camping.

16. 16
    Christiania

    Back down the Gudbrandsdal and the Mjosa to the Victoria, where the Boots has kept their two portmanteaus of gorgeous apparel since 13 July - and they put on collars again for the first time in three months.

17. 17
    Hull

    Back up the Humber in September on the same line of steamers, brown and thin and having lived all summer on what they shot and caught - and with two canoes that have been across a country and back.

18. 18
    London

    Home. Six years later Jerome K. Jerome published a book about three men going up the Thames in a boat, and it has never been thought a coincidence - and this one is still in print in Norway.