Bathurst wheels out most rewarding ride

The Bicycle Book, Bella Bathurst. Harper Collins, 306 pages. $24.99. Reviewed by Marion Gilbertson.

With its cheerful title reminiscent of the kind of book the Famous Five might have taken on a cycling adventure, The Bicycle Book is a quirky gem full of wonderful and interesting facts and lively anecdotes.

British author Bella Bathurst loves bicycles. She believes the bicycle is a marvel of ingenuity and technology.

‘‘The bicycle’’, says Bella Bathurst, ‘‘though old and cheap and slightly comic, has become the 21st century’s great transport success story.’’

In The Bicycle Book, she examines its chequered history, free-wheeling erratically around the globe from Britain and France to North America and India and back to Holland.

She recounts stories of cycling’s lesser known heroes – people such as Vinod Punamiya, the 50-year-old Indian gentleman who, in 2007, raced the Deccan Queen Express from Pune to Mumbai (a distance of 140 kilometres) and beat the train hands down; and Zetta Hills, a British woman who, in 1920, water-cycled down the Thames River.

If there is a message from this book it is that the world of cycling is unpredictable and diverse. We accompany Bathurst as she interviews London cabbies about cyclists, (‘‘get ’em off the road’’) Edinburgh cycle couriers, Tourde France racers, BMX riders, a family of mountain bike fanatics, plus a veritable chain gang of others who cycle.

Bathurst has built her own bicycle frame from scratch. She has pedalled a trishaw around the streets of New Delhi and investigated the bicycle as a weapon of warfare.

With its pick ’ n mix structure, The Bicycle Book is never boring. In fact, it’s a real pageturner. It is thought-provoking, engaging and, at times, very funny. Bathurst writes with confidence and flair and takes us on a rewarding and revolutionary ride.

Reading The Bicycle Book is almost as satisfying as riding an actual bike, without having to leave your chair.