Title: The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold
Author: Moore, Tim
Published by: Yellow Jersey Press (Vintage) (Kindle edition)
Year: 2016
First published: Yellow Jersey Press, 2016
Date reviewed: 10.17
ISBN: 9781473522855 (Epub)

It’s sixteen years since I read and reviewed Tim Moore’s “French Revolutions“, his first cycling book. Since then he’s written several other books including one about the notorious 1914 Giro d’Italia, “Gironimo”, in which he rides a vintage bike around the route of the race.

In “The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold” he is back on a classic rather than vintage bike, an East German Mifa shopping bike with 20-inch wheels and in most versions an open folding frame guaranteed to collapse. Fortunately he managed to find a non-folder, and someone to add a top bar for strength.

I first picked up the tale from his blog while he was riding south through the Finnish winter. Fascinated by this clear madness and remembering I’d enjoyed “French Revolutions” I followed his story. It turned out he planned to cycle on his Mifa from the north of Finland to the Black Sea coast along the line of the old Iron Curtain, a route sketchily defined as the Eurovélo 13.

Riding the Mifa means plenty of cycling episodes, but that’s not the main point of the book. It’s much more a social commentary on the various countries Moore passes through and how they have fared since the break-up of communist eastern Europe. He draws on historical sources and his own experiences of travelling through eastern Europe shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall.

Criss-crossing the national borders along the route he meets people whose lives have been caught up in the sweeping historical and political changes in this part of the world. They range from taciturn and depressed to jovial and exuberant, depending on how the post-war years have treated them. The country that an exhausted, hungry endurance shopping-bike cyclist found most enjoyable? Surprisingly – Serbia!

Although his crazy journey could have suddenly ended at any time, he made it to the end – about 10,000km on a stupid bike. I liked the book. Oh, and I almost forgot to say — it’s very funny!