The CTC Guide To Family Cycling, Dan Joyce (2009)
A sound and comprehensive distillation of everything needed to help a family pedal off
James Pembrooke Publishing, 9780954817640 Full colour paperback 194pp £9.99
Anyone who has spent a lifetime cycling might struggle to appreciate the usefulness of a title such as this. Even regular cyclists who are trying to work out how to involve their recently-arrived progeny into their two-wheeled activities, will probably have spent more time than they care to admit to, looking at how other cyclists solve such problems.
Make no mistake, however, this is a rich compendium of common sense, for which there is a burning need. In another life, I answer readers’ questions about cycling in a national newspaper. Around a quarter of those who send in their queries (which is to say, all those who ask about issues relating to children cycling), could have found the solution to their query in Joyce’s excellent volume.
It is probably not a book to be read from front to back. Its triumph, though, is that it covers everything that a family planning to start cycling might care to consider. And, the advice it proffers is both dispassionate and unfailingly good. A wealth of colour illustrations give the book a magazine’s easy-to-read quality. And if you have no use for a copy yourself, buy one and send it to a family that you think might be on the cusp of taking off awheel.
Tim Dawson Mar 10