Ride: Cycle the World

This makes for an excellent coffee table book. The “wish I was a cyclist” in me was thrilled about the routes and destinations throughout the book. It’s not super in-depth, but not everything has to be!If you’re a rider, this is for you !

Best book ever for bike lover's in need of challenging themselves!

One hundred bike rides spread across all six continents, of which five are in the UK and one in Ireland. (Yes, I know Antarctica is a continent but I doubt it's bicycle friendly.) Routes are shown, along with distances, ascent and road surface, and the text, accompanied by some good photos, tells you what you can see and do along the way. Much of it looks rather daunting, no more so than the 7,226 mile trip from Cairo to Cape Town, and the rather scary sounding 'Death Road' in Bolivia - a 38 mile, 12,000ft descent if you're interested. Make sure your brakes work.Some routes are also ones you wouldn't usually think of. Southern Albania for instance. Or a 600 mile loop on gravel and dirt roads around the Tien Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan. The short 18 mile circuit of Rottnest Island off the coast near Perth sounds mundane by comparison. The first few pages are taken up with choosing a bike and preparing for your journey, which is rather wasted, as no one but the committed biker will actually take up the challenge of any of these rides, so they're already wise. Yes, it's a nice book put together with the assistance of 40 avid cyclists/adventurers, and I enjoyed reading it, but I can't see many readers deciding to traverse the Karakoram Highway from Islamabad to Kashgar, China.Right, I'm off to blaze a trail along the Oyster Bay and Viking Coastal Trails.

This is more of a casual flick-through than an actual atlas of bike rides. I doubt a coffee table exists that could support the weight of a book containing details of all of the world's bile rides.This is a coffee table book rather than a serious route reference. The book does contain details of many rides across all of the continents of the world. The book is well presented - organised into continents and countries, with maps, photographs, and ride data. Usefully, if you were to cover one of these rides on your travels, the GPX files are available from the publisher, so you can load the routes onto your bike computer.Personally, I would do a lot more route research and planning, rather than rely on the limited detail in the book. It is a nice book, but to get the number of worldwide rides included that it does, the detail has to suffer in order to keep the book at a manageable and profitable size.

What to give as a present to someone obsessed with cycling? Accessories for the bike itself or bike clothing is a risky choice, unless you know that person's tastes really well. This book is a really tasteful idea as a gift for the cyclist in your life: a themed present that isn't in any way tacky.The book is beautifully designed and illustrated, giving entertaining and enlightening descriptions of one hundred cycle trails around the world. It appeals as a present not only to the ardent cyclist, but to anyone with a yearning to see the world, as many of the routes are through parts of the world that are lesser-known.Due to the nature of the book, you don't get detailed descriptions of the destinations themselves, nor how to get to and from the start and end points on the list. However, the book is peppered with enough tips and insights to make it an engaging read, even if you're not planning a trip to South America or Australia any time soon.The real stars of the book are the photographs, which are beautifully presented and incredibly well chosen to give an insight into the sights awaiting you. I really enjoyed reading this: it's a pleasant coffee-table book for every person who likes to read travel guides and mentally plan a hundred different trips. I can't imagine anyone actually going out to complete any of these (except perhaps for the ones closest to home) but it's great for holiday dreamers!

I'm a big fan of coffee table books - books that look good and are interesting for me and visitors too. Good talking points.As an amateur cyclist I found this book fascinating. It's a good compromise between a readable and engaging book for non-serious-cyclists and inspiration for those that will probably ride some of the routes features.The intro section on types of bike etc seems a little unnecessary to me - I'd have left that out - and if you were actually contemplating any of these routes then you'd need much more thorough advice than the brief preparatory guidance at in the intro too. Anyway, it's mildly interesting if you're not familiar with cycling.The main business is the routes themselves. I think the pages are really well set out. Not cluttered, but the text us broken up nicely with features: a map of the route labelled with key landmarks or points of interest, an elevation profile, stats about the route, top tips and photographs. The book is truly global, covering all main continents and includes routes through Botswana, Bolivia and Bhutan, for example.If you're an exploring cyclist, then this book will inspire you - and you can download GPX routes from the DK website and access their Strava club too to join others who share the same route interest as you.Overall, a fab coffee table book.