Touring - Great cycle-touring books...

What are your favourite cycle-touring books?

I have just finished reading "Long ride for a pie" by Tim Mulliner. It's a great read about Tims overland journey through Europe, Middle East, Asia and Australia. Very inspirational, and has got me pondering over an atlas for the past few nights.

"Journey to the Centre of the earth" by Nicholas and Richard Crane is another long term favourite... about a journey from Bangladesh to the Gobi back in the 80's.

Not touring specific but a great read about why we do shore to shore rides for different reasons.
"Riding with the Blue Moth" By Bill Hancock.
Awesome read about life and the enjoyment and peace cycling can bring after hardship.

Partners in Grime and The Lead Goat Veered Off, both by Neil Anderson.
http://www.cyclelogicpress.com/

Around the World on a Bicycle
by Fred A. Birchmore

Great book, it's about Fred taking his bike around the word in the 1930's. Fred still lives just down the way from me.

Just picked up Adventure Cycle-touring Handbook: Worldwide Cycling Route and Planning Guide by Stephen Lord. I've found it helpful and a good resource for my first tour next summer.

The Masked Rider by Neil Peart, about his tour in Africa.

Around Ireland in low gear. Negative in tone which is interesting both as regard's the author's extensive travels and the possibility of planing stupid trips.

Thomas Stevens's Around the WOrld on a Penny Farthing. Might as well start at the begining. Abvailable online and in reprint book form.

http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/stevens/000028.html

"Miles From Nowhere" by Barbara Savage. Have read it several times. Gets to me every time!

Goran Kropp rode his bicycle from Sweden to Mt. Everest. He then climbed the mountain alone without supplemental oxygen. This was the same year all of the "Into Thin Air" folks perished on the mountain.

As if that was not enough, he then turned right around and rode back home.

We heard Goran speak in San Diego a few years ago and he literally knocked our socks off. This man knew what adventure means. He was tragically killed in a climbing accident in Washington state a few years ago. His girlfriend Renata Chlumska (http://www.renatachlumska.com/) has just complete a journey paddling around America.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/156331830X.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Anne Mustoe as a writer on cycle touring:
A Bike Ride - 12,000 Miles Around the World.
Lone Traveller One Woman, Two Wheels and the World.
Two Wheels in the Dust From Kathmandu to Kandy.
Cleopatra’s Needle Two Wheels by the Water to Cairo.
Amber, Furs and Cockleshells: Bike Rides with Pilgrims and Merchants.

But my favourite cycle tour book is by Polly Evans: It's Not About the Tapas.
A funny book about a cycle tour in Spain.

Miles from Nowhere and The Handsomest Man in Cuba. Out of the 10 or so bike touring books i read this summer those were the best by far.

I really liked "Hey Mom, Can I Ride My Bike Across America? Five Kids Meet Their Country" by John Seigel Boettner. It made me feel more willing to consider touring with middle-school-aged kids. Excellent read.

Miles from Nowhere is still my favorite. Also, if you can get your hands on a copy, it's fun to peruse Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle by Karl Kron, published in 1887. Here's the review I wrote for Amazon in 2004:

"If you've ever wondered how it was to ride those high-wheeled "ordinaries", this book is for you.

"I will confess to having yet read only to page 73 of this thick tome, but from that alone I can recommend the book. It is an absolutely fascinating look into not only early-day bicycling, but also early New York City and environs. Bicycling was a totally different thing back then, and the reader is at once horrified and regaled by accounts of the challenges presented the wheelman in those days. Cyclists were held in awe by some, jeered and thrown at by others. Spills on cobblestone streets were frequent, and from those high-wheelers, falls were quite dangerous. I have toured over 15,000 miles by bicycle, but hardly a one presented the challenge this author commonly faced.

"Read it as history or as adventure--it doesn't matter. It's a great, one-of-a-kind look into the past by a writer who told his late-1800s story entertainingly, using those wonderfully-competent sentences of the old school, and who believed that "The pleasure of riding alone depends very much on whether or not a man takes good company with him." To read this book is to take his pleasure and make it yours."

I'm amazed Josie Drew has not made the list yet.

Several interesting books all on long distance cycling

_Spokesongs_, Willie Weir, Breakaway Books 2000 hardback edition. (Compelling polished style presented on nice paper & binding). Its a transcript of 75 or so NPR broadcasts illustrating three of his longer tours in India, South Africa, and the Balkans.


_Sting in the tail: by racing bicycle around the world_ by Peter Duker,
From the 1970's, I believe this must describe a minimalist world tour carrying very little gear. Available used at amazon.com, but a few days ago I found it cheaper and new at Amazon Japan. Am waiting it's arrival by slow boat, when I will learn how Duker did it!