More farmland came and went and although I was rarely afforded the opportunity to cycle through it, there was clearly a lot of forest, especially to the south between the Avenue Verte and the Seine. The increasingly predominant crop was sunflowers, their heads drooping slightly under the weight of their seeds. They were now at the point where the sun had done its work and they seemed desperate for the bees to take their pollen, the birds to eat their seeds or a farmer to decapitate them and turn them into a tub of Flora. But as of yet, no semi-detached houses, tree-lined cul-de-sacs, excruciatingly polite dinner parties or seething resentment of the people next door. Suburbia had yet to be reached.

Le Grand Tour on a Bike Called Wanda 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. If you would like to gift a signed copy of the book, please complete the form below:

Le Grand Tour on a Bike Called Wanda (signed copy)

£15.00

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