Book review: Bicycle Maintenance

Bike maintenance is like a language: you learn it by doing it, not from a book. Except that without the book you won't know what to do in the first place.

Being able to look after a bike is a valuable skill, especially when you see what some bike chains charge you for a service - fifty quid for really, really basic stuff you can do easily at home in an hour. (Anyone who's ever been rushed two hundred quid for a basic survey on a house, which tells you things you could have worked out for yourself like how many rooms it's got, will know the feeling.)

Bicycle Maintenance is a new guidebook which tells you all this stuff. Clearly laid out in a magazine style, it covers the literal nuts and bolts, from simple cleaning and maintenance, through cable and bearing replacement, up to truing wheels. (This is the imperfect subjunctive of bike maintenance: too tricky for normal people in practice, but it's reassuring to know the theory.) It's written mainly from the mountain bike perspective, but addresses road bikes too (with their different gear shifters, for instance).

Getting confidence fixing bikes does need experience. The section on fixing punctures is fine, for instance, but the only way of learning how to put a tyre back on with your fingers, without needing tyre levers, is to do it: it's a craft. Adjusting indexing and gear ratios – which the book also covers comprehensively – is presumably the same, though that's a bridge too far for real cyclists like me. A wobbly bridge at that.

This looks a very good reference to have on your shelf. Bicycle Maintenance, by Guy Andrews and published by Dennis, is available from Amazon for £8.99. You may well see it in shops like Tesco and WH Smith, and it's also on sale through magbooks.com.

And no, if you buy it through that link, I don't get any commission. And no, I don't want to hear from anyone telling me how to set up affiliate links and sponsored advertisements to plaster my blog with in order to earn untold riches.

Book review: 'Bicycle'

I finally got round to buying Bicycle, a sort of real cyclist's introduction to cycling by Guardian journo Helen Pidd. It tackles questions such as whether you can get arrested for being drunk on a bike, how to mend a puncture, or the slightly Shakespearian-sounding 'must I don a luminous tabard'? And it's resolutely Real Cycling: Helen's in favour of normal clothes, sensible bikes and everyday enjoyment.

It's also written with women cyclists in mind, so expect lines such as this, explaining that frame sizes differ between manufacturers: 'a size 10 in Marks and Spencer's is different to a size 10 in Topshop'. I found this alienating; I'm size 18.

Friendly and approachable in style, it's nicely written and full of good sense - Helen's experiences of everyday biking in London clearly inform the book. It's ideal for anyone you know who's tempted to join in the London boom we keep hearing about.

Routing it out: Two new London guidebooks

There's no money in writing cycle guide books. I have this joke about my 50 Quirky Bike Rides in England and Wales: "With the royalties, I've bought a pied à terre in Borough Market. Er, no, not a pied à terre, what's the word...? Pomme de terre, that's it..."

So it's no surprise that there's surprisingly few good books on London cycling routes. But two new ones have recently come out: The London Cycling Guide (New Holland, 224pp, £10.99) by Tom Bogdanowicz, and 25 London Cycle Routes (downloadable e-book, 108pp, £6.95) by London Cyclist blogger Andreas Kambanis.

Tom's (top right) is the more comprehensive, with 30 routes plus a few family-friendly park circuits, more information on each ride, and forty-odd pages of general up-to-date info about cycling in London, buying a bike, fixing a puncture and so on. Andreas's (bottom right) has the benefit of live links within the PDF, and the full set of GPS coordinates that you can feed to your iPhone or whatever.


Both are clearly set out and their routes easy to follow. Tom's is clearly a team effort, produced with the input of borough groups, and publishing house resources; he's strong on detail, history and architecture, and he took the well-bike-populated photos himself. Andreas's is more personal and quirky, and he utilises Flickr images, which are more atmospheric but lack bikes. Both base their maps on open-source material (OpenStreetMap and OpenCycleMap respectively).

If facts and detail are important to you, go for Tom's book: there are a few slips in Andreas's (Ham House is in the wrong place, Brydges Place is 33 not 15 inches wide, and that's a funny looking sheep on page 32, for instance). But you may prefer his lively and personal approach to Tom's more traditional, guidebooky style.

All the routes look fun, though, and any in either book will be rewarding - Tom's routes tend to explore one geographical area, while Andreas's tend to the more thematic.

Are either of these the London guidebook we've been waiting for, then? Well, no, obviously. That's going to be my 50 Quirky Bike Rides in London.

No, just joking. It's too much work for a potato.