Title: Gironimo
Author: Moore, Tim
Published by: Yellow Jersey Press
Year: 2015
First published: Yellow Jersey Press, 2014
Date reviewed: 03.23
ISBN: 9780224100151

This is the fourth of Tim Moore’s books that I’ve read, and the ninth he has published. My reading is definitely non-sequential though: I read ‘French Revolutions‘, his third, in 2002; his tenth, ‘The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold‘ in 2017 and his eleventh, ‘Another Fine Mess‘ in 2020.

‘Gironimo‘, like ‘French Revolutions‘ and ‘The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold‘, is the story of an epic bike ride; this time he rides the route of what is claimed to be the hardest-ever edition of the Giro^*. He does it on bike of similar vintage to the 1914 Giro he is replicating, as authentic as he could make it, down to the wooden wheel rims and brake blocks fashioned out of bottle corks.

As crazy ventures go this is what we expect from Moore as he lurches from one breakdown to the next, one repair shop to another (when he can find one), as his narrative cuts between his own adventures and the historical record of the 1914 tour and its suffering riders. It’s makes an interesting read, but for me neither as engaging nor laugh-out-loud funny as his other cycling stories I have read.

* The Giro d’Italia, the Italian equivalent of the Tour de France.

How often do places change their names? If I asked most people who walk up and down my road I bet they’d say "Not very often". But Brian the stamp collector would know better. I remember the pages in my childhood album: Straits Settlements, Orange Free State, Burma, the collective Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. More recently I think of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union. The modern state of Iraq is less than 100 years old. Cumberland and Westmorland disappeared and were replaced by Cumbria. Euskadi is emerging as the name of choice for the Basque region. It’s happening all the time.

Place names change as a result of conquest or colonisation, revolution, inhabitants’ pride or bureaucratic convenience. In "Whatever Happened to Tanganyika?" you’ll find examples of all these. This book could be consigned to the genre of Books Of Quirky Lists That Appear In All The Shops A Month Or Two Before Christmas, but it deserves better than that. Campbell’s research is thorough and well-documented, and although the dust jacket suggests a nostalgia trip there is little here to be nostalgic about. Intrigued, probably; amused, certainly: but also saddened and even angered at the stories behind some of the now-defunct place names – the Belgian Congo, for example, or the still-unresolved cynical disregard of the human rights of the Chagos Islanders by successive British governments.

As I said, there are plenty of lighter stories too. I particularly liked the account of British Heligoland, resonating from childhood radio as the shipping forecast area of Heligoland and German Bight. I never knew it had been British. Nor did I know that after the end of the Second World War the British tried to blow these entire islands out of the water. Typically we didn’t manage to, but it did leave Heligoland in rather a strange shape (look on Google Earth). But if you want to know which nation has a language which is named after the sea cucumber you’ll have to read the book.