When it comes to ill-conceived journeys by bike, British author Tim Moore is your man. For his latest book, the author of Gironimo! and French Revolutions decided to tackle what’s become known as the Iron Curtain bike trail (‘Euro Velo 13’), starting in the Arctic Circle and finishing in Bulgaria. What’s more, he wanted to do it with a Soviet-era shopper, the MIFA 900. So naturally, we asked him to send us the worst parts of his journey…
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I was hiding from the August sun under a Florentine café parasol when a journalist phoned to ask me about Euro Velo 13. Our conversation was brief, just long enough for my interviewer to imagine a story headlined, ‘Part-time cyclist knows nothing of new Iron Curtain bike trail.’
The next day I set off for home, having exchanged my usual budget airliner for the four-wheeled fruit of a cheapskate’s midlife crisis: a two-door, eighteen-year-old BMW. It was a ruminative drive, partly because of my dilatory route, and partly because the radiator hose blew off whenever I put my foot down.
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Across northern Italy I followed roads I’d cycled two years earlier, retracing the 1914 Giro d’Italia on a 99-year-old bike with wooden wheels. Crossing into France I sought out Alpine climbs remembered, more fuzzily, from my ride around the 2000 Tour de France route. And all the while my thoughts were snagged by the idea of tackling this Iron Curtain Trail: a 10,000km journey through 20 nations, I’d been told, beginning at Norway’s Arctic confluence with Russia.
What a deliciously cool antidote to the wilting south-European summer, periodically enhanced as it was by an antifreeze steam facial whenever I raised the bonnet in a lay-by. I found myself dwelling on a formative three-month tour I’d made around the Eastern Bloc in 1990, just after the Wall came down. As a child of the Cold War, I couldn’t get my head round the fact that one could suddenly amble across the death-strip.
At the age of twelve I’d acquired a wooden-clad, Russian-built short-wave radio, and spent hours twiddling through eerie Soviet interval signals, ten-note loop-tape fanfares interspersed with some fruity-voiced defector announcing: ‘This is Radio Prague, Czechoslovakia.’ I was enthralled and petrified in equal measure.
- Tim Moore’s account of his ride, The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold, is published by Yellow Jersey. Buy it from Amazon
- Follow Tim on Twitter: @mrtimmoore
Day 1: I’ve gone on holiday by mistake. The Arctic Circle
Day 18: Tohmajärvi, Finland
Day 24: Petergof, Russia
Day 44: Ahlbeck, Germany
Day 54: Hötensleben, Germany
Day 78: Near Kalna, Serbia
Day 83: Near Pirin, Bulgaria
Day 87: Tsarevo, Bulgaria – the final curtain
- Tim Moore’s account of his ride, The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold, is published by Yellow Jersey. Buy it from Amazon
- Follow Tim on Twitter: @mrtimmoore
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