I hope that travel writer Tim Moore doesn’t mind me saying this as I mean it in the nicest way possible way, but judging by his books – and I’ve read them all – he seems to be a man in the midst of a permanent and hilarious mid-life crisis.
All of his books see Moore leaving his family [I guess for cliches sake I should refer to them as long-suffering] seemingly on a whim/strange manly urge and undertaking long journeys of varying degree of challenge and, well, silliness. His latest work, The Cyclist Who Went Out In The Cold, is no different.
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After his first cycling-themed book, the brilliant French Revolutions: Cycling The Tour de France (2001), he waited 12 years before saddling up again. As you do, he felt that riding the route of one of the toughest ever Giro d’Italias – the 1914 edition – on a period bike, with cork brakes and all, for Gironimo! Riding The Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy (2014) was a good idea. It wasn’t really, but like French Revolutions it was bloody funny reading about it…
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This time, Moore didn’t leave it another decade before heading off on two wheels again. His 10th book, The Cyclist Who Went Out In The Cold: Adventures Along The Iron Curtain, involves his hardest, probably daftest ride yet: 10,000km or so on the newly created (if not entirely finished) Iron Curtain cycling trail from Finnish Lapland to the Black Sea in Bulgaria. On a two-speed, slightly modified East German small-wheeled shopping bike.
A bike for a horror trip
The bike, a MIFA 900, is not a thing of beauty and definitely not the natural companion for a multi-thousand kilometre tour. Bought from German eBay, even MIFA enthusiasts implore Moore not to do it: “Please avoid, it will become a horror trip!”
Does it become a horror trip? Well yes and no – Moore is an incredibly easy companion and manages to make light of situations that would probably reduce hardened cycle tourers to gibbering, curled-up-in-the foetal-position wrecks.
A little bit of history
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