Gironimo!
  • Published: 15 May 2015
  • ISBN: 9780224100151
  • Imprint: Yellow Jersey
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

Gironimo!

Riding the Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy

Formats & editions
EBook
1 May 2014
Paperback
15 May 2015
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The author of the bestselling French Revolutions does Italy - cycling the course of the 1914 Giro d'Italia on a wooden bike.

'Bill Bryson on two wheels' Independent

A 3,162 km race. A 48-year-old man. A 100-year-old bike. Made mostly of wood. That he built himself.

Tim Moore sets off to recreate the most appalling bike race of all time. The notorious 1914 Giro d'Italia was an ordeal of 400-kilometre stages, cataclysmic night storms and relentless sabotage - all on a diet of raw eggs and red wine. Of the 81 who rolled out of Milan, only eight made it back.

Committed to total authenticity, Tim acquires the ruined husk of a gearless, wooden-wheeled 1914 road bike with wine corks for brakes, some maps and an alarming period outfit topped off with a pair of blue-lensed welding goggles.

From the Alps to the Adriatic the pair relive the bike race in all its misery and glory, on an adventure that is by turns bold, beautiful and recklessly incompetent.
  • Published: 15 May 2015
  • ISBN: 9780224100151
  • Imprint: Yellow Jersey
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

About the author

Tim Moore

Tim Moore’s writing has appeared in the Daily Telegraph, the Observer, the Sunday Times and Esquire. He is the author of Gironimo!, French Revolutions, Do Not Pass Go, Spanish Steps, Nul Points, I Believe In Yesterday and You Are Awful (But I Like You). He lives in London.

portrait photo of Tim Moore

Also by Tim Moore

Another Fine Mess
The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold
Spanish Steps
French Revolutions
Do Not Pass Go
Vuelta Skelter
You Are Awful (But I Like You)
See all

Praise for Gironimo!

A considerable achievement

Duncan Craig, Lonely Planet Traveller

A wonderfully written, extremely funny book... You read Gironimo! with a permanent smile on your face

UK Press Syndication

A superbly funny read

Cycling Weekly

Gironimo! is partly a story of adversity, despair, and tenacity – and partly a funny, and often sweary, travelogue. I was hooked from the start

Seamus Kelly, Cycle

Readers of Moore’s French Revolutions will not be disappointed by this hilariously painful, and poignant, adventure

Anna Carey, Irish Times

Absurd, inspirational and laugh-out-loud funny, Gironimo! Is a charming tribute to the dogged resilience of the amateur spirit and a golden age of road cycling

Tom Kerr, Racing Post

Part travelogue, part sports record and part history and all written with his inimitable humour

By the Dart

Painfully funny

Tim Dowling, Week

Gironimo is the perfect successor to French Revolutions, and provides more of everything that made the latter so popular

Cycling World

The author’s adventures are often highly entertaining, though, as "road-trip" literature, it is unusual in that it mostly makes the reader glad not to be on the road!

Good Book Guide

Insightful and witty

Cycle Sport

It’s just exciting to read

Toby Neal, Shropshire Star