Vuelta Skelter

Riding the Remarkable 1941 Tour of Spain

By: Tim Moore

Narrated by: Tim Moore

Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Tim Moore completes his epic (and ill-advised) trilogy of cycling's Grand Tours.

Julian Berrendero's victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Franco's concentration camps, punishment for expressing Republican sympathies during the civil war. Seventy-nine years later, perennially over-ambitious cyclo-adventurer Tim Moore developed a fascination with Berrendero's story, and having borrowed an old road bike with the great man's name plastered all over it, set off to retrace the 4,409-km route of his 1941 triumph - in the midst of a global pandemic.

What follows is a tale of brutal heat and lonely roads, of glory, humiliation and then a bit more humiliation. Along the way, Tim recounts the civil war's still-vivid tragedies and finds the gregarious but impressively responsible locals torn between welcoming their nation's only foreign visitor and bundling him and his filthy bike into a vat of antiviral gel.

©2021 Tim Moore (P)2021 Penguin Audio

I feel the burn in my thighs!

This has been a wonderful book to listen to. I am not a fanatical cyclist, and nor am I execessively interested in Spain. However, the subjects provide a fascinating backdrop to a skillfully written travel book with humor and empathy for a man whose passion was challenged by the events of the Spanish Civil War and the events that followed. if you have time give it a try.