I’ve written a range of comprehensive guidebooks and two-wheeled travelogues to read at your leisure, whether you’re preparing for a long bike trip, living life on the road, or already home and dreaming of the next big ride.
How To Hit The Road: A Beginner’s Guide To Cycle Touring & Bikepacking
First published in 2017 and updated in 2021, this book is my comprehensive newcomers’ introduction to the art of the bicycle-mounted adventure.
Every aspect of a cycle tour or bikepacking trip is covered in 34 chapters, split over three parts: pre-trip planning, initial execution, and adapting to the long haul.
As well as broad, practical advice, I’ve woven inspiring and reassuring anecdotes throughout the book – because getting away from the starting line isn’t about knowing everything, but having the confidence to begin.
Drawing on my personal experience of almost two decades of adventure cycling, more than 50 veteran riders from diverse backgrounds have also contributed to this guide, making it one of the most well-rounded introductions you’ll find to this radically liberating form of independent travel.
Whatever you’re planning and wherever you’re going, if it involves a bicycle and the spirit of adventure, How To Hit The Road has got you covered.
Janapar: Love, on a Bike
My first travelogue, originally published in 2013 and the subject of a successful crowdfunding campaign, telling the true story of my first 3½ years on the road.
This was far from your typical long-distance bike tour, however. From the cover blurb:
When twenty-three-year-old Tom Allen and his friends set off from their English village to cycle around the world, they were expecting physical hardship, extreme conditions and a serious case of culture shock. But the hours spent poring over maps could never have prepared them for the experience of life on the road: the petty squabbles, the extreme hospitality, the unexpected joys and dangers.
And then Tom meets Tenny, a feisty Iranian-Armenian girl with dreams of her own, and hits a crossroad. Should he give up his grand plan for the girl he loves, or cycle off and risk missing out on the greatest adventure of them all?
Temporarily out of print (except in the USA), Janapar is still available as a Kindle ebook from all Amazon portals worldwide.
Latest posts about my books:
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Researching Armenia’s Most Comprehensive Travel Guidebook – By Bicycle
There’s another purpose to my in-depth bicycle tour of Armenia, which is also a nice development for my occasional career as an author: I’ve been greatly honoured with the task of researching and writing the next edition of the Bradt Travel Guide to Armenia. This British publication is the only dedicated English-language guidebook to Armenia currently in print. The original book was put together by a husband-and-wife team who first came to Armenia in 2001 and have been revising and updating it for three further editions since. But Bradt needed a new author for the 5th edition, and the commissioning… Continue reading →
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How To Create A Gorgeous Travel Photobook That Engages & Inspires
Step 1: Do Something Inspirational I don’t mean inspirational for anyone else; I mean for yourself. Creative juices run swiftest when you’re truly inspired. Seek out what moves you most and allow the process to take you places you didn’t know existed, literally and figuratively. Continue reading →
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Images From The Journey: Introducing the official #Janapar Photobook
Whenever I head out on an adventure, I constantly find myself wondering why it took so much thinking and dithering before actually doing it. This still happens after years of experience. “It’s so easy just to do this! Why didn’t I do it ages ago?” The same thing happened with the photobook that I’m launching this week. I could have created this at any point in the last couple of years. Instead, I dithered. But now I’ve got off my backside and created the definitive photo travelogue of Janapar, I’m wondering why it took so long to do it! About the book,… Continue reading →
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The Weave Of The Ride (or, Janapar from Andy’s point of view)
In the summer of 2007, my best mate Andy Welch and I set off from my front door. We’d called our expedition ‘Ride Earth’, and were all set to cycle round the world. But the experiences that followed changed all we thought we knew about, travel, adventure and cycle-touring. Weave Of The Ride, Andy’s own account of that eight-month journey from England to Armenia, offers an alternative perspective on the story that ends with Ride Earth’s disbandment and the beginning of two new solo adventures. In this guest post, Andy goes into detail about his new book. Continue reading →
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Are Book-Writing And Film-Making The Same Thing?
Subjects are nouns, their actions are verbs, their appearances adjectives. A sentence is a single shot, while a paragraph is a sequence of them. Paragraphs are built into chapters, and sequences are built into stories. Then chapters are assembled into books; stories into films. The viewfinder is my vocabulary. The focus ring and exposure dial are my spelling and grammar. These are basic things that I’d better get right. And I need a good mixture of context and detail, otherwise my tale will become muddled and hard to understand. Continue reading →