Cycling Adventure

As Ellie’s 50th birthday approaches and her ambitions of a steady income, a successful career and an ascent of Everest seem as far away as ever, she begins to doubt she’s capable of achieving anything at all. So when her best friend Mick suggests a gruelling cycle ride from Land’s End to John o’Groats, she takes up the challenge. They opt for the scenic route which takes them along cycle paths, towpaths and the back roads and byways of Britain, unable to resist sampling beers in the pubs they pass along the way.

On Monday 18th September 2017, Mark Beaumont pedalled through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. 78 days, 14 hours and 40 minutes earlier he set off from the same point, beginning his attempt to circumnavigate the world in record time. Covering more than 18,000 miles and cycling through some of the harshest conditions one man and his bicycle can endure, Mark made history. He smashed two Guinness World Records and beat the previous record by an astonishing 45 days.

Why take the shortest, most direct route through life, when you could choose the wiggliest, most mountainous one possible? Armed with a limited grasp of Spanish and determined to meet as many Lamas as possible, Anna and her friend Faye set off on a six-month journey along the spine of the largest mountain range in the world - the Andes. Beginning in the bustling city of La Paz, the duo pedal south - through dense jungle, across pristine white salt flats and past towering volcanoes, following the path of thundering glacial rivers to the snow-tipped peaks of Patagonia.

If you want to know more about bike tours, but you are not ready to go on your own bike touring experience yet, then this book will answer a couple of questions you may have, and, hopefully, it will also show you the way to have a successful bike tour. This guide focuses on everything you need to know about bike touring, but it also gives you information about the things you must do before, during, and after a bike tour.

Sit back or saddle up as double Olympic gold medallist and multiple world champion Geraint Thomas gives you a warts-and-all insight into the life of a pro cyclist. Along the way he reveals cycling's clandestine codes and secret stories; tales from the peloton; the key characters like Wiggins, Hoy and Cav; the pivotal races; and essential etiquette. Geraint Thomas is treasured for treating his sport just as the rest of us see it: not as a job but as an escape and an adventure.

Sean Conway was stuck in a dead end life of his own making when he heard about a round-the-world cycling race. He was immediately inspired - but it was a huge undertaking, and he'd hardly been on a bike in years. Could he really cycle all the way round the world, solo and unsupported? Six months later, after completing a punishing training schedule and packing up everything he owned into boxes, Sean was in Greenwich Park, on the start line of the adventure of a lifetime.

His cheeks are as tender as raw meat on a butcher's block. And those are just the cheeks of his face. As he slumps in the saddle, watching the road disappear into the distance, he aches in parts of his body that he's only just discovering he has. When Mark travels to Ecuador to go hiking and climbing, he discovers a land of dramatic volcanoes rising through the clouds and wide-open horizons rich in history.

Disillusioned with corporate London life and with no previous experience as a long-distance cyclist, Anna decides to clamber atop a beautiful pink bicycle (named Boudica) and set out on an 11,000-mile journey on her own, through each and every state of the USA. Dodging floods, blizzards and electrical storms, she pedals side by side with mustangs of the Wild West, through towering redwood forests, past the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains and on to the volcanos of Hawaii.

Fed up with questions about what he was going to do when he retired, Edward decided to get on his bicycle and ride from Le Havre to the Mediterranean. He struggled in Normandy to get directions from old men tipsy on Calvados by 9 am, passed by prairies of corn and acres of sunflowers, and hit his stride on the towpath of the Burgundy canal. He explored the mystery of what an ouvrier eats for lunch, and was barred from a swimming pool because his trunks were too decent.

Richard Moore, Lionel Birnie and Daniel Friebe share their diaries from three incident-filled Grand Tours, the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Vuelta a España. These take listeners behind the scenes and explore the culture and landscape as well as the racing while the ‘Lionel of Flanders’, complete with beer recommendations, does the same for the Classics in Belgium.

Julia Goodfellow-Smith was a non-cyclist just six weeks before she and her mountain biking friend, Alison, set off on this epic 350 km route around Southern England. Follow Julia’s sometimes bumpy journey from a cycling novice to riding King Alfred’s Way itself. Whether you’re an experienced cycle tourer or rookie like Julia, learn from her mistakes—and her successes—to make your next bikepacking adventure the best possible success.

If bikepacking is on your bucket list, then combine Live Your Bucket List with Cycling King Alfred's Way in this box set. What’s it really like to cycle King Alfred’s Way? Is it a piece of cake, or rather harder than that?