When the blurb for a book start with “Award-winning author”, you immediately have high hopes for the book. In this book, Herrick tells of when he crossed France by bicycle, from west to east.
The book is somewhat unusual in that Henrick didn’t do a continuous 1 200 km journey. Instead, at times he hired a car, to drive to a different part of France, for example, to go cycle Col du Galibier, amongst others. Given that he lives in Australia, that strategy makes sense, and allowed Herrick to be able to fit in more targeted areas of France. If he was to cycle to all of those, he’d have run out of time.
What I should have said
I’ll be very upfront: I struggled reading this book. In fact, I came very close to putting it down and never picking it up again. Allow me to explain why.
I don’t mind it when authors anthropomorphise inanimate objects (like a bicycle) on occasion. However, I mind it very much when an author insists on have long and drawn-out imaginary conversations with their bicycles, instead of telling me about their journey. Herrick does exactly that.
He finishes off every chapter with a summary of the distance he cycled that day, which is great if you were the record-keeper of cycle journeys. To anyone else, that’s just naff. By all means, if – for whatever reason – you cycled a monstrous day (for you, not using anyone else’s measures) then do tell us about it. If not, it really doesn’t matter.
Worse, he ends each chapter with a “What I should have said” quote, referring to some or the other interaction he had with people that day. We all have had belated epiphanies for what would have been a fantastic reply, had we thought of it at the time, but we don’t usually bore others with that.
Award-winning author
Herrick is an award-winning author. The awards he won are for children’s books, and I fear he might have forgotten his audience when he wrote this book.
Regular visitors to WillCycle will know I’m a map geek, and I’m good at various means of navigation. I have no issue with a cycle tourer getting lost along the way (sometimes, you discover delightful surprises that way). However, I do have an issue with cycle tourers having a ridiculously lackadaisical approach to roue planning, getting lost repeatedly, and actually complaining about it.
Herrick does that a fair few times in the book. The book was published in 2012, and even then, digital navigation was a thing that’s easy to do. And that’s before we consider going old-school, and using decent maps, that are readily available in all European countries.
Verdict
By now you will have realised I didn’t enjoy this book. It could have been so much better, had the author written it for people above the age of 12.
However, we’re all different, and perhaps you’ll love it. Who know? Anyway, you can get a copy here.