This is classic Tim Moore. He intersperses tales of his cycling and mechanical ineptness with well researched histories and observations about the places he is travelling through.
Obviously he can't be anywhere near as unprepared and mechanically clueless as he makes out and his writing can be a bit flowery at times but his musings and characterisations of different nationalities and countries are very acute showing why, to me, he is by far the best of the travel writers who do these silly adventures and write about them.
This trip takes him from the north of Finland and along the route of the former "iron curtain" to Bulgaria. To someone of my age who grew up in the cold war with the threat of nuclear annihilation ever present its very interesting to read about life in the Soviet bloc. He did a similar journey in 1990 shortly after the fall of the iron curtain and he occasionally intersperses excerpts from his wife's diary of the time to compare how much things have changed, or not, since then.
There was some weird formatting in my Kindle edition which obviously doesn't handle Eastern European letters very well but this didn't affect my enjoyment of the book.
- From mountain bikes to cycle computers, find 1000s of products in our bikes store.
- Amazon Business : For business-exclusive pricing, quantity discounts and downloadable VAT invoices. Create a free account
- Also check our best rated Travel Book reviews
- Buy this product and stream 90 days of Amazon Music Unlimited for free. E-mail after purchase. Conditions apply. Learn more
