Great British Bike Rides: 40 Classic Road Routes

Great British Bike Rides is a route-planning book for road cyclists who want to explore the UK on two wheels. It covers 40 rides stretching from southern England all the way up to Scotland.

Each route gets its own chapter, and the level of detail is impressive. You will find a written description, a gradient profile, an analysis of the hills with specific climbs picked out, maps and turn-by-turn directions. Every route is graded somewhere between Moderate and Extreme, and the book is illustrated with plenty of photographs.

The details are:

• Author: Dave Barter
• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vertebrate Graphics/Publishing Ltd
• ISBN-10: 1906148554
• ISBN-13: 978-1906148553
• RRP £25, though it is typically sold for around £19.99

It is a useful resource for researching cycling trips. The Chilterns, for instance, make a good two-day ride that can be planned with its help. It is not the sort of book to carry with you on the bike, partly because it is not designed for that and partly because it is fairly heavy. Instead, it comes with a set of downloadable GPX files that can be loaded onto a bicycle GPS device.

The routes range from 59 to 100 miles, so they are not aimed at beginners. Some are genuinely demanding because of the climbing involved. What they do offer is a showcase for wonderful countryside and a real sense of achievement once each ride is finished.