Epic Bike Rides of the World

by Lonely Planet

Дiscover 200 of the best places to ride a bike in this beautifully illustrated hardback. From family-friendly, sightseeing urban rides to epic adventures off the beaten track. Destinations range from France and Italy, for the world's great bike races, to the wilds of Mongolia and Patagonia. These journeys will inspire - whether you are an experienced cyclist or just getting started.

The book is organised by continent. In the Americas we join a family bikepacking trip in Ecuador; we pedal the Natchez Trace Parkway and stop at legendary music spots; we ride the Pacific Coast Highway in Oregon and California; go mountain biking in Moab and Canada; and explore the cities of Buenos Aires and New York by bicycle.

European rides include easy-going trips around Lake Constance, along the Danube and the Loire, and coast-to-coast routes; routes in Tuscany, Spain and Corsica; and professional journeys up Mt Ventoux and around the Tour of Flanders.

In Asia, we venture through Vietnam's valleys; complete the Mae Hong Son circuit in northern Thailand; cross the Indian Himalayas; and pedal through Bhutan. And in Australia and New Zealand we take in Tasmania and Queensland by mountain bike; cycle into Victoria's high country and around Adelaide on road bikes; and try some of New Zealand's celebrated cycle trails.

Each ride is illustrated with stunning photography and a map. A toolkit of practical details - where to start and finish, how to get there, where to stay and more - helps riders plan their own trips. There are also suggestions for three more similar rides around the world for each story. Each piece shows how cycling is a fantastic way to get to know a place, a people and their culture.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Cycling, Adventure, Reference, Sports, Bicycles

328 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2016

About the author

OUR STORY
A beat-up old car, a few dollars in the pocket and a sense of adventure. In 1972 that’s all Tony and Maureen Wheeler needed for the trip of a lifetime – across Europe and Asia overland to Australia. It took several months, and at the end – broke but inspired – they sat at their kitchen table writing and stapling together their first travel guide, Across Asia on the Cheap. Within a week they’d sold 1500 copies and Lonely Planet was born. One hundred million guidebooks later, Lonely Planet is the world’s leading travel guide publisher with content to almost every destination on the planet.

Reviews

[Trudie · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my ongoing effort to get through some of my "coffee table" books, I have finally gotten around to reading this Lonely Planet book of "Epic Rides".
I fully admit to gravitating towards this because of the cute illustrated cover and a vague desire to be encouraged to pedal around some picturesque riverside trail, while riding one of those bikes with a basket on the front containing, say, cheese and chocolate. However.... while there are maybe one or two rides like that in here, the majority seem to deal with grinding things out over mountaintops and along windswept and barren looking North Atlantic coastlines, not to mention some hard core mountain biking. I guess I knew this might not be pitched at my level when the first ride is 12,000 km from Egypt to South Africa.
Taken as an armchair adventure book I found Epic Bike Rides rather disappointing both in terms of writing and photography. It seemed like several images were taken from some sort of stock photography rather than being specific images from the ride itself. Riding the Rif for example inexplicably had an image of a hooded figure knocking on a blue door and not a single image of the bike route or even a cyclist. Arty Copenhagen was illustrated with a weather vane and random Danish commuters cycling ?
However, this book does provide a very good list of ideas for cycling adventures around the globe, just be prepared to do plenty of your own extra research.

[Goldenwattle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too hard core for me. Where are the gentle rides with coffee shops, places to stay that don't involve camping and the like?
In Australia where are the bike trails, such as the sealed Wangaratta to Bright and Beechworth routes? Maybe the best one, with good scenery (vineyards, etc), cafes, accommodation along the route.
No, this book lost me. It's for a younger readership who likes extreme riding. Actually not just younger, but only a small percentage of that demographic. When I was younger I took my bike to Europe and cycled about for several months. I cycled across country in Australia. Each time with full panniers full of luggage, but this book (as far as I got reading it) would have been too hard core for me.
Cairo to South Africa anyone!

[Jesse Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how to ride a bike, but this is now one of the nicest books I own. It's just very beautiful - a tour of the world whether you bike or not. The illustrations and photography are amazing.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

More useful as a coffee table book than as a planning guide, but it's fun to thumb through and imagine.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I discovered this in a cruise-ship library. There are two types of rides in this book: ones you could conceivably make and those surely relegated to fearless trust-fund 19-year old hardcore cyclists. I wrote down some itineraries from the former category (Natchez Trace. Lake Como.) and enjoyed the outrageous concepts of the latter.

It has good pictures and would make a nice gift for your adventurous friends. If I were a doctor, I'd have it on the table in my waiting room. And it is just at home in the library of the cruise ship.

Worth a browse.

[Richard Propes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think you could easily subtitle this book "All the places you're never going to ride your bike in this world."

I tend to enjoy the Lonely Planet books. They are often coffee table type books, as is true with this one, and they are often good or discovering new places to visit, new adventures, or simply to fantasize about living a life with enough money to travel to places the Lonely Planet writers seemingly go on a daily basis.

"Epic Bike Rides of the World" is, indeed, to be taken literally. This is not your "mom and pop" bike trail book, but a serious look at some of the world's most epic bike rides from competitive journeys to collective adventures to isolated countries where you're not even allowed to tour alone. If you're looking for slow, meandering trails where you can safely travel you can fairly well set this book aside. While there are a handful of such trails in the book's 500+ pages, the vast majority of the book emphasizes true adventure.

The good news is that "Epic Bikes of the World" is for the most part a well written travelogue, a series of writers sharing their actual experiences on these trails. At times, you can feel their experience in the writing and you can feel how meaningful that experience had been in their lives.

Other times, "Epic Bike Rides of the World" is more matter-of-fact. Every adventure, though, offers a very helpful "toolkit" of what to expect, what to pack, where to stay, where to eat, and other valuable tidbits. While I figured out early on that this book would be of very little use to me, I found myself appreciating the personal and practical information included as a disabled activist who often travels by wheelchair and who often finds myself going off in search of just this type of information.

That was, in fact, my original purpose for picking up the book as an Amazon Prime read. I wondered if I might get enough information and/or photographs of the trails to discern their wheelchair friendliness. I'm always looking for new places to go and new adventures to have, but such revelations were few and far between here. While there are photographs to be found here, they are for the most part rather general in nature and meant to support the "epic" nature of these rides. In other words, they aren't particularly helpful.

Similarly, while I found the "toolkit" to be helpful in a general sense there was never really a differentiation regarding when these were actual "trails" and when these were simply rides along lonely highways that might not be as friendly to walkers, runners or, in my case, wheelers.

There's nothing wrong with a book devoted to planting the seeds for fantastic travel adventures and essentially that's what you get with "Epic Bike Rides of the World." It's ultimately a fun to read book filled with bike rides and life adventures that a good majority of us will never experience but we'll enjoy picking up the coffee table book and sighing to ourselves "One day!"

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book as a birthday present and I was so pleased as it's exactly the kind of book I would want for myself, but folks would never think to buy for me lol As a Bookseller, I very rarely buy coffee table books but this is so much more than for the coffee table.

I genuinely found it so interesting that I read it from cover to cover and loved spotting the Hebridean Way that runs the length of my home islands the Outer Hebrides in it :) The photography throughout the book is stunning and I loved the artwork style.

The stories of the rides themselves really lit a fire in me and all of them made me want to start planning an epic ride. Maybe it was due to reading this on my 44th birthday when, I most definitely felt my middle-age made me realize that I'm thirsting for a real adventure: something that will push me and challenge me. However, I think I need to work on my fitness and battery management before taking on an epic ebike ride!

The section on North America's Pacific Crest talks of a camaraderie among the route's cyclists that I recognize from books like Cheryl Stray's Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail and Gail Muller's Unlost: A journey of self-discovery and the healing power of the wild outdoors when talking about long distance hikers, but have never heard of before referring to cyclists. It was really interesting and had me downloading even more long distance cycling stories to my Kindle to read later.

This book has two other companions: Epic Bike Rides of Europe and Epic Bike Rides of the Americas 1 and I have added both to my wish list for Santa. Overall, I would highly recommend this beautiful book to cyclists, appreciators of good photography and artwork and generally anyone that loves to get lost in stories from other peoples adventures.

[Les Stanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been an avid customer of Lonely Planet publications since way back. There was nary a time I didn’t set off on a trip, without a copy of the relevant LP guide packed in my backpack or pannier. Their informative, detailed guidebooks helped me wander, less aimlessly, around the Indian sub-continent and were invaluable when, one hot summer in the 70s, I rode a tandem from London to Athens.

Epic Bike Rides of the World is a fitting title for this book. Rides are graded as Easy, Harder and Epic with pretty much a three-way split of content. But the grading, of course, depends on the fitness, motivation and endurance level of the reader. I liked how the trips, while they do show a total distance, do not give any estimate of time needed to complete them, leaving the reader to make their own decision on this. Being an older rider, who appreciates the stops, more than the cycling, this feature appealed to me.

This is not the sort of book you read from cover to cover, more the sort you graze on from time to time, while reclining on your chaise-longue. As I dipped into it, I realized that I was unlikely to ever do any of the rides myself. Similarly, I’ve read many books about climbing Everest, but know I’ll never rise to that challenge. Still, reading about other people’s adventures is enthralling and frequently awe-inspiring.

The layout of the book is a bit odd. There are stunning pictures but the body text font is quite small. Also, details of each trip, called a "Toolkit", are always on the last page of each section. These “Toolkits" give a good overview of each trip along with ways of getting to and from the start and finish points. They would, I feel, be better placed at the beginning of each trip description.

The book is beautifully bound but rather heavy. So, not a book to try and read in bed, or to pack in your already overloaded panniers.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does exactly what it should: make you want to bike in all the places. There are some rides I will definitely do at some point: the CNO and Allegheny passage, the Vermont Covered Bridges, etc., some rides I will wistfully miss (Oahu), and someone might end up doing if life happens.

I was surprised at how few rides there were listed for Africa- that continent is huge, surely you could find as many as what Europe has? But fun to learn you can bike from Cairo to South Africa. That sounds amazing.

Also disappointed that most of the rides in the Americas are in North America and none of the featured ones in South America are in Brazil- it’s the largest country there- how could you miss it?

The rides in Asia also looked great: Mongolia, for example, sounded amazing. But others were a bit too mountainous.

Reading this will make you want to bike everywhere. How hard can it be? 10 year old bike around for fun.

I’m curious about Lonely Planet’s book of rides of the Americas.

[Vinayak Hegde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually about 3.5 stars. While I do not do long rides on the bicycle, this book was written very well with a good smattering of bike trips around the world. After reading this book, I have bookmarked a few trips that I would love to do solo or with family when travelling overseas.

The coverage of Europe (and Aus-NZ) was very good with cities and historical trails across different countries which you can vicariously follow while reading the descriptions of the trail. What I loved was the different types of trips - historical trails, nature trails, Mountain rides and pretty much anything you could see on a bike. This book certainly got me interested in long-distance cycling while travelling.

[Madalene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, this is a coffeetable book, not an actual guide. Rides are organized with the most important information last, and often inaccurate (in one place, it indicates it is 168 miles to bike from London to Munich). The focus here is on the pictures and narrative of other people's enjoyment of these rides. The more helpful part is at the end of each described, ride, a page called "More Like This" where three additional rides are described in short form that share a common thread. This is more helpful. But, if you're willing to do your own searching through each article to get the important info about how to tackle any of these trips, go for it - it did at least share some trips on continents that most bike touring books don't cover.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great picture book. The routes descriped range from ultra epic to very approachable. The problem is, there is almost no organization to the rides. There will be a ride in Africa, then 3 more "like that ride" all over the world. There is no way to find what you are looking for outside of random browsing. And even then, the routes are not described in detail, so as to help you plan such a ride. Rather, you are given grand overviews. This is great to get you sparked, but not to get you closer to getting your wheels on the path.

Overall, a fun perusal but not what I was hoping for.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if you are not an avid cyclist, this book will be very entertaining and informative. The book is divided by continent with level of difficulty listed. Also, in addition to the featured ride are other suggested similar rides. Foreign and national rides can be accessed with your own equipment or rentals. I was most interested in the American trails as traveling will be very limited in my future with the COVID-19 virus. Combining this with some hiking trails will be add more leisurely exercise and touring. Great book with vivid photos.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lonely Planet seems to have decided to publish more specialized guides - although this isn't a take-it-with-you sort of guide but more of a this-may-inspire-you introduction to possibilities for longer distant cycling (generally at some non-trivial expense, by the way).

The format is puzzling. It isn't a coffee table book, but is large-ish format. Physically it reminds me of a high school text book.

The book covers in some detail fifty different possible cycling routes (as they call them) in thirty different countries, organized by region (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania). The number of routes per region varies widely, with all of two for Africa but nineteen for Europe and fourteen for the Americas. The rides are categorized "easy, harder, epic." For each route, there is a "tools" section that gives some information for someone who might actually be considering one of these rides, but since these are mostly not in one's neighborhood and would require considerable preparation, they are just a bare bones start at the research that would be required.

The photography is nice - again, with the idea to perhaps inspire you.

In a nod at how such information would be presented on a web side, each of the fifty routes ends with brief "more like this" section with another three routes covered in a paragraph. Some of these rides were more interesting to me than the ones covered in details - oh well.

The front cover has the blurb, "Explore the planet's most thrilling cycling routes" at the bottom of it. Perhaps I don't think of "thrilling" the right way. Clearly a few of them are in what I would consider attractive for a thrill seeker, but I would say a more accurate blurb would be "the planet's most satisfying cycling routes." But I guess inspiration needs to be for thrills, not satisfaction.

[Nick Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

To start with the pros, the book has beautiful pictures and I added many of the trails to an ongoing list of rides I would like to do.
I take issue with this book because the stories are overly wordy, however. Many of the stories either focus on aspects of the ride that aren’t interesting or they use unnecessarily complicated language and sentence structure. Overall I felt like this book was good, but not great.

[Mirthe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leuke fietsverhalen om bij weg te dromen. Ideaal ook dat alle soorten van fietsen aan bod komen: road cycling, MTB, long distance rides & family trips. Ik had alleen wat meer praktische info verwacht.

(Het boek is redelijk groot en zwaar, wat nogal onhandig is. De letters zijn ook redelijk klein. Slechte punten voor de vormgeving.)

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

My book of dreams. This guide describes cycling rides around the world, with a variety of types -- road, mountain, family, etc -- and a variety of distances. Although not every single ride appealed to me, there were plenty that did. This is a great starting point for planning a bike vacation, and a real motivator to just get out there and make it happen.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good and useful guide for sparking your next travel plan. It's not in detail enough on any one trip of course to help you plan a specific bike ride, but it is an excellent armchair travel book (especially useful in 2020) to start your travel dreams, make a list, and research your destinations further elsewhere.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of amazing-looking rides in here. There isn’t overwhelming detail, which is totally fine as this book is merely a starting point to do more research. However, it was frustrating that quite a few journeys had no detail about what kind of bike ride should be used (gravel, road, touring, mountain, etc).

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit, this book made me want to quit my job and get out there and ride like fuck all over the planet. As a warning: a lot of the rides here take place in remote and challenging parts of the world. Don't go unless you're a seasoned traveler and an experienced bicycle mechanic with survival skills on top of it.

[Stewart Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice book, really for dipping in to read, not a flowing read in it's entirety. ONly odd thing is the that "Similar Routes" are a long way from similar and tend to be shor day trips rather than the week+ tours I was expecting. Basically is has either Epic (Crossing Africa) or day trips!

[Kieren]

nice to dip in & out of. not the most practical guide (checked up and some of the info was wrong/considerably outdated) but then it doesn't claim to be! if nothing else, it's full of bucket-list fuel for any avid cyclist.

[Am Y · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely nothing "epic" about any of the rides featured, especially those in Asia. I wouldn't call cycling around rice fields and the countryside "epic" in any way. Nor generic scenery of mountains and stuff. Maybe "scenic/pleasant" would have been a better description.

[Danay Pérez Pérez · Rating 2 out of 5]

No soy fan de este tipo de anécdotas, aunque son cortas, llegaron a ser para mi sorpresa, en extremo aburrido. Uso de imagenes no originales, crea una falsa expectativa al lector. Buen libro para practicar adjetivos en inglés.

[MJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

a bit disappointing tbh. spends too long telling me to visit buenis aires nyc vermont and amsterdam. like really?

while cool bikepacking trips barely get a mention.
i dont need LP to tell me to visit already famous places come on

[Tracy Stanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few breathtaking photos providing inspiration for travel, but not necessarily by bike. Well for me anyway as a solidly-grounded, social cyclist. I love the idea of the book and of the opportunity to travel vicariously.

[Alan Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic! What an inspirational book - makes you want to jump on your bike and start exploring.
Each of the routes is only a couple of pages, which is a great taster. The details are there if you fancy giving the route a try.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous photos accompany these very inspiring itineraries. Can I do them all?? Beautiful book!

[Heather Rooney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book and I wish I could go ride all of these amazing places now!

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great ideas for your future

Found the pyrenees and looking at trips,maybe next year or not. i am a freee bird! Great Britain also looked like some great possibilities