“Sayarer’s thoughtful, meditative travelogue feels very important . . . [An] exploration of how people persevere in the darkest of circumstances” Guardian

“It conveys powerfully what life is like for people on both sides of ‘the world’s most entrenched impasse’. At the same time, it’s full of free spirits and the joys of freewheeling” Telegraph

Ten years after breaking a world record for cycling around the world, award-winning travel writer Julian Sayarer returns to two wheels on the roads of Israel and occupied Palestine.

His route weaves from the ancient hills of Galilee, along the blockaded walls of the Gaza Strip and down to the Bedouin villages of the Naqab Desert. He speaks with Palestinian hip-hop artists who wonder if music can change their world, Israelis hoping that kibbutz life can, and Palestinian cycling clubs determined to keep on riding despite the army checkpoints and settlers that bar their way.

Pedalling through a military occupation, in the chance encounters of the roadside, a bicycle becomes a vehicle of more than just travel, and cuts through the tension to find a few simple truths, and some hope. As the miles pass, the journey becomes a meditation on making change – how people in dark times keep their spirit, and go on believing that a different world is possible.

“The vast energy of his commitment to discover, observe and communicate makes for engrossing, often incandescent prose. We need writers who will go all the way for a story, and tell it with fire. Sayarer is a marvellous example” HORATIO CLARE

What if we were less reliant on our cars? What if there were safe cycling paths to take us places instead? What if those paths led to the next town, the next village and the countryside beyond?

This was the dream of a group of Bristolian idealists in the 1970s when they founded Britain’s National Cycle Network, which now runs to nearly 13,000 miles across the country. Journalist Laura Laker sets off on an odyssey around the UK to see where the NCN began, and where it is now.

What has gone right – and wrong – with this piece of national infrastructure? Why is it run by a charity whose CEO once admitted ‘we’ve had enough of it being crap, we need to fix it’? Laura lifts the lid on this maddening, patchy, and at times dangerous network, and the similarly precarious politics and financing that make it what it is.

She discovers beauty, friendship and adventure along the way, from the Cairngorms to Cornwall, from the Pennines to the South Wales coast. On her mission to pin down what the NCN is and what it means to those who use it, she also meets up with high-profile travelling companions, including Chris Boardman and Ned Boulting.

In a country where 71% of trips are less than five miles, two thirds of Britons say they want to cycle more and doing so could help our climate, health and wellbeing. Laura is on a mission to see if we can make that dream a reality.

‘Full of delightful anecdotes and interviews and fascinating historical tales’ Mail on Sunday

A panoramic portrait of the wonderous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine.

A toy, a tool, a liberator, or complete nuisance: the bicycle has been many things to many people over the decades, yet it endures as the most popular form of transport in the world. How has such a simple machine achieved so much?

Combining history, travelogue and memoir, Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous vehicle from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a ‘green machine’. Readers meet unforgettable characters: women’s suffragists who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity.

By examining the bicycle’s past and peering into its future, Two Wheels Good forms a joyful ode to an engineering marvel of global importance.

‘Funny, precise, surprising’ Adam Gopnik

‘Love for two-wheeled transport runs through every sentence’ Economist

‘Wry, rich, deeply researched’ Patrick Radden Keefe

‘The climbing fan’s bible’ – The Washing Machine Post

‘A deep dive into and a celebration of mountain climbing’ – Cyclist Magazine

When, during the Pyrenean stages of the 1998 Tour de France, a journalist asked Marco Pantani why he rode so fast in the mountains, the elfin Italian, unmistakeable in the bandanna and hooped ear-rings that played up to his “Pirate” nickname, replied: “To shorten my agony.”

Drawing on the fervour for these men of the mountains, Climbers looks at what sets these athletes apart within the world of bike racing, about why we love and cherish them, how they make cycling beautiful, and how they see themselves and the feats they achieve.

Working chronologically, Peter Cossins explores the evolution of mountain-climbing. He offers a comprehensive view of the sport, combining contemporary reports with fresh one-to-one interviews with high-profile riders from the last 50 years, such as Cyrille Guimard, Hennie Kuiper and Andy Schleck. And, unlike many other cycling books, Climbers also includes the stories of female racers across the world, from Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio and Annemiek van Vleuten to Fabiana Luperini and Amanda Spratt.

Climbers analyses the personalities of these racers, highlighting the individuality of climbing as an exercise and the fundamental fact that it’s a solitary challenge undertaken in relentlessly unforgiving terrain that requires unremitting effort.

Captivating and iconic, Climbers is the ultimate cycling book to understand what it takes both physically and mentally to take on the sport’s hardest stages.

There are the classic mountain climbs beloved of followers of the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia, such as the climb to Mont Ventoux in France and the Stelvio Pass in Italy. Still in Italy, there is the mass participation of L’Eorica, a bike tour in traditional costume on vintage bikes.

For those wishing to push themselves to the very edge (literally) there is the Yungas Road in Bolivia whose alternative name is El Camino de la Muerte (Death Road). Long-distance trails, such as the Great Divide (Canada/USA) and the Great North Trail (England/Scotland) can form an epic trip of a lifetime, or be tackled in smaller sections. On more robust wheels there is the A-Line single track in Whistler, Canada, and The Whole Enchilada in Moab, Utah.

If you like your cycling on a flatter incline, many routes follow old railway beds, such as the Hiawatha and the Katy Trails in the USA, P’tit Train Du Nord (Canada) or the Parenzana which crosses from Italy to Slovenia to Croatia, plus many of the European routes follow great rivers.

Also included in over 50 routes; Danube Cycle Path, Ring of Kerry, Iron Curtain Trail, Vasco-Navarro Greenway, Flanders Beer Route, Carretera Austral (Chile), the San Juan Islands, Norway Postal Boat, the Loire Valley, Passau to Vienna, Munda Biddi Trail, Shimanami Kaido (Japan), Route des Grands Crus (Burgundy), Nantes to Orleans, Paris to Mont St.Michel, Great North Trail, Alpine Panorama, Salzach Valley, Otago Peninsular, Route 10 Holland, Garden Route (South Africa), and the Hebridean Way.

Extraordinary but true stories from 200 years of cycling history.

Part of the bestselling Strangest series, Cycling’s Strangest Tales is a quirky and fascinating collection of stories from cycling’s history. Included are stories of Thomas Stevens, the doughty Englishman who circumnavigated the world on a penny farthing, the 1904 Tour de France winner who was disqualified for catching the train, the 1937 Japanese invasion of China spearheaded by 50,000 bicycle-mounted troops, and the man who soared over nine circus elephants on an ordinary yellow bike. The stories come from every corner of the cycling world, whether it’s the open road, the velodrome or the BMX track.

Brought bang up to date for 2017 with a selection of new stories, Cycling’s Strangest Tales is the perfect gift for anyone who’s in love with life on two wheels.

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