Le Grand Tour… : The Danish Opinion? “A Classy Exponent Of A Cycling Story”

By Andrew on October 26, 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

It’s nice to be peer reviewed and it was interesting to read the article on Danish website Cykelportalen last week about Le Grand Tour on a Bike Called Wanda. It is good to know that an opinion from abroad is just as positive as those at home.

Here’s a link to the original article if you can cope with the Danish. Below is a translation.

“Andrew Sykes’ story about a two-month cycling trip in France is not an ordinary cycling story. Almost 400 densely written pages alone, without either pictures or illustrations, will probably deter most people from throwing themselves into it.

But don’t worry, this is a positive review, because it is a really good cycling book, far from the slightly hyped many cycling narratives unfortunately have. Sykes’ very personal and often dry humorous narrative style is infectious and makes the often somewhat dusty bicycle touring narrative alive and engaging.

Cycle touring done wrong

Sykes and this reviewer have very different views on how to plan a cycling trip. He has an extremely lazy and rather casual approach to route planning, for example he never goes wild camping, and relies on paper tourist maps and even Google maps on his phone. Someone this reviewer would hardly do.

Bike touring done right

But objectively speaking, there is no right or wrong way to do bike tours, but the modern technology of our age often enslaves us to it, where chance and improvisation disappear in meticulous route planning. And even if you are occasionally irritated by Sykes’ sloppiness regarding route planning, which is largely based on the EuroVelo route network. Despite his safe choice, it still meant that he had several unplanned adventures along the way. After all, his kind of planning works for him, while for others it will be wrong. And that is precisely cycle touring in a nutshell, very individual.

Sykes combined his touring cycling with trains and even a few ferries during this adventure. He introduced a distance limit of 100 km per train journey and a limit of only ten train journeys. That, combined with a deadline to get back in time for the start of school (Sykes is a school teacher), creates a surprising sense of urgency in his journey without detracting from the story in any way.

Sykes occasionally goes on long-distance cycling trips and then writes a book about it. That’s the basic premise, and when you put it that way, the immediate conclusion might be the recipe for a slightly boring cycling tale. But that is certainly not the case in his case. As previously mentioned, this is an extremely successful story about being a touring cyclist/bikepacker.

Sykes has a very dry sense of humor and he is not afraid to use it on himself. His writing style is extremely relaxed. He does not write cycling tour books as such. Instead, he writes books that tell the story of an adventure (which happens to take place on a bicycle and therefore at a human pace) in such a way that you are left itching for your cycling shoes and wanting to go on your own adventure. And it is very much the ultimate expression of a well-written cycling book.

It is important to point out that Sykes is no Bear Grylls, and there is not even a hint of bravado about him in his books. This is despite some of his cycling adventures being very impressive athletic feats. Instead, his writing style puts you at ease and takes you on a wonderful adventure. Over the course of the book, you learn little nuggets about the places Sykes cycles through, and he does it in such a way that you will long for even more.

The Grand Tour is not exactly a book you can finish in one evening. Let the slowness get to you and fall into Syke’s glorious cycling journey universe. A cycling book with great insight, humor and self-irony! In conclusion, it must be pointed out that the book naturally requires a certain amount of English skills to get the full benefit, not least on the humorous level.

The Grand Tour on a Bike called Wanda is a classy exponent of a cycling story that can get other than just hardcore adventure cyclists on the steel horse!

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Le Grand Tour on a Bike Called Wanda, was published in May 2024 and recounts Andrew P. Sykes’ journey around France, into the Alps and down the Rhine in the summer of 2022. It is available as a paperback and as and eBook from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com (and other international Amazon sites). The paperback is also available from Waterstones or Foyles and the eBook from Apple iBooks.

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