Don't be fooled by this suave and nonchalant athlete: endurance cycling has not come easily to Tim Moore. His grand-tour trilogy has been 20 terrible years in the making - a time-scale that allowed him to forget just how awful he felt riding round the 2000 Tour de France (French Revolutions), and just how stupid he looked retracing the 1914 Giro on a wooden-wheeled bike in period kit (Gironimo!). In between he has pulled a donkey across Spain (Spanish Steps), ridden an East German shopping bike down the Iron Curtain (The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold), driven a Model T Ford across the US (Another Fine Mess) and mysteriously failed to grasp that this kind of stuff doesn't get easier with age.

Vuelta Skelter is really three books in one. It's the story of Moore's own epic 2,760-mile, lung-busting, thigh-wrenching journey... It is a rich, kaleidoscopic look a the legacy of the Spanish Civil War... And it is also a tribute to Berrendero - a tough, dour loner who refuses to give an inch, either to the mountains or to the authorities... Moore wants to restore JB [Berrendero] to his proper place in the ranks of cycling legends. He succeeds superbly.

Don't be fooled by this suave and nonchalant athlete: endurance cycling has not come easily to Tim Moore. His grand-tour trilogy has been 20 terrible years in the making - a time-scale that allowed him to forget just how awful he felt riding round the 2000 Tour de France (French Revolutions), and just how stupid he looked retracing the 1914 Giro on a wooden-wheeled bike in period kit (Gironimo!). In between he has pulled a donkey across Spain (Spanish Steps), ridden an East German shopping bike down the Iron Curtain (The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold), driven a Model T Ford across the US (Another Fine Mess) and mysteriously failed to grasp that this kind of stuff doesn't get easier with age.

Vuelta Skelter is really three books in one. It's the story of Moore's own epic 2,760-mile, lung-busting, thigh-wrenching journey... It is a rich, kaleidoscopic look a the legacy of the Spanish Civil War... And it is also a tribute to Berrendero - a tough, dour loner who refuses to give an inch, either to the mountains or to the authorities... Moore wants to restore JB [Berrendero] to his proper place in the ranks of cycling legends. He succeeds superbly.

Don't be fooled by this suave and nonchalant athlete: endurance cycling has not come easily to Tim Moore. His grand-tour trilogy has been 20 terrible years in the making - a time-scale that allowed him to forget just how awful he felt riding round the 2000 Tour de France (French Revolutions), and just how stupid he looked retracing the 1914 Giro on a wooden-wheeled bike in period kit (Gironimo!). In between he has pulled a donkey across Spain (Spanish Steps), ridden an East German shopping bike down the Iron Curtain (The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold), driven a Model T Ford across the US (Another Fine Mess) and mysteriously failed to grasp that this kind of stuff doesn't get easier with age.

Vuelta Skelter is really three books in one. It's the story of Moore's own epic 2,760-mile, lung-busting, thigh-wrenching journey... It is a rich, kaleidoscopic look a the legacy of the Spanish Civil War... And it is also a tribute to Berrendero - a tough, dour loner who refuses to give an inch, either to the mountains or to the authorities... Moore wants to restore JB [Berrendero] to his proper place in the ranks of cycling legends. He succeeds superbly.