Two riders from Ireland are putting together a trip that celebrates the first round-the-world trip on a motorcycle, by Carl Stearns Clancy in 1912-1913.
In 1912, Clancy and another man, Walter Storey, set out on their trip, starting in Dublin, says Visordown. Storey left the expedition after a crash in Paris; later in the trip, Greg Frazier tells us another fellow named Robert Allen joined, but Clancy was the only man to do the whole journey. He covered 18,000 miles in 10 months on a 1912 Henderson motorcycle, with a top speed around 55 mph.
He rode through the British Isles, mainland Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, and France, wintering in Paris and establishing a motorcycle dealership during the stay), northern India, Ceylon, Shanghai, Japan, and the U.S. (San Francisco to New York).
Now two Irishmen, Feargal O’Neill and Joe Walsh, are detailing plans through Horizons Unlimited to do their best to re-create the groundbreaking trip. They are setting the route up so riders can join in, for a short stint or even thousands of miles, if they have the time and money. A couple of riders have already indicated they plan to ride the whole journey.
Greg Frazier, who literally wrote the book on Clancy’s trip, is organizing the American leg. Sadly, it doesn’t seem that any of the route will travel through Canada, so if we want to take part, we’ll have to travel south … or across an ocean, to join in.
