Professional cycling is deeply rooted in the written word. All three grand tours - Spain's Vuelta, the Giro and the Tour de France itself - were created to boost flagging sales of newspapers. In Italy it was La Gazzetta dello Sport that instigated the Giro d'Italia in 1908. John Foot, in Pedalare, Pedalare! A History of Italian Cycling relies heavily on the contemporaneous writings of Gazzetta journalists and others - dubbed 'the second peleton' - to add context and colour. Tracing the sport's transition from a heroic pursuit practised by riders from largely rural backgrounds at the start of the twentieth century to what he denigrates as the current 'moribund farce' in which riders pump 'their bodies full of... dangerous substances in order to win', Foot argues that Italian cycling's past - when the sport resonated on multiple levels with large sections of the population - is where its true heart and soul still reside. What reader could resi...

Sleep, evidently, is for wimps. That must be why Dave Abbott is going to finish off a week of 11 hour night shifts at BBC News, by cycling all the way from London to his home in Hove, BEFORE hitting the sack for a well-earned slumber. I will spin along to provide moral support along with Tim Oakley, although only Dave will be pedalling off after doing an entire night's work. It might be legitimate to ask why anyone would want to ride 60 miles on busy roads - the equivalent of the London to Brighton bike ride, plus a bit extra, with no proper sleep for a week . And here's the answer: We're doing this to raise funds (see our Justgiving page) for Felix White , a hugely brave six-year old boy who, two years ago, was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, a particularly aggressive cancer that can come from out of nowhere and spreads like wildfire through the body. In the two years since he and his family found out, Felix has had numerous operations to remove tumours (most recently from ...

The organisers of the 2012 Olympics may not be quite so keen on this pothole on the Box Hill section of the road race route Potholes may be the scourge of the cycling and driving classes but on my regular commuting route to work, I've come to value them as familiar waypoints which mark my progress. To say I know my 20 mile (return) trip like the back of my hand is to do an injustice to the extremely intimate knowledge I have of every bump, contour, raised or sunken drain cover, hairline crack and fissured stretch of Tarmac, between my front door in Kingston and the office gates in Shepherds Bush. Riding along the same streets every working day for the last 12 years or so, I have internalised the precise line I should take round every single bend. I'm not just talking everyday directions of the, 'turn left at the lights and straight on at the roundabout' variety; I mean I have memorised minute chicanes between micro-potholes; I adjust my speed to cope with the oncoming ...

The cover photograph was taken by Taz Darling It's long been a matter of regret that I can't afford to buy any of Rapha's luxurious cycling attire.There's no doubt that their merino wool jerseys and other evocative retro riding kit are top quality - but they also come with top quality price tags which frankly, are out of my range. But this year I've pushed the boat out after a fashion and purchased some cycling-related Rapha merchandise, in spite of myself. And, I have not been disappointed. It may not be wearable, it may not wick sweat or repel rain showers, but the special Tour de France edition of 'Rouleur' - the publication co-produced by Rapha - is a reading experience akin to wearing real animal fur next to bare skin. And apparently that's a good thing! The surprise literary revelation of this edition - the writer who broke away from the bunch and stayed up the road with every pen stroke - was none other than reclusive , Scottish, King of the Mou...

The camel - always better than a bike in the Sahara Spring IS here finally - and along with the daffs and chirping sparrows, the fair-weather cyclists are back, in their thousands. I for one welcome them. It's been a cold, wet, lonely, winter pedalling through snow, slush and seasonal temperatures. I managed to negotiate the arctic conditions without disaster apart from one fall in the middle of Richmond Park when my front wheel bobbled out of a rut in the ice and slithered sideways into the frozen pothole at the edge of the concrete path. I was unceremoniously dumped onto the dirty white snow, where blood from my gashed knee marked the scene of my tumble with a bright red, Tarantinoesque, puddle of gore. Calamity-free it may have been, but winter commuting on two wheels, has also been an often unpleasant ordeal - as usual. Is it my imagination or do car drivers pay less attention to cyclists when the weather turns nasty? It's not as if THEY are being lashed by the rain or b...

A year on from publicly declaring my fixie fixation , I'm still wimping out by riding my Pearson Touché as a single speed, free wheel. There's no good excuse for this laxity. Time poverty could be a plausible reason. It must take considerable hours of practice to feel confident on a fixie, after all - time I don't have. But the truth is, I've just never got round to flipping my rear wheel. I feel quite comfortable staying free and single - in a bicycling sense at least. Being a cheerleader for a movement I've not wholly embraced myself may smack of hypocrisy. But a recent jaunt into London's Square Mile suggests that I am not alone. The City is a-swarm with bicycles of all shapes and sizes, weaving their way through the congested traffic. Trader types on mountain bikes; prim PAs on granny-geared shoppers; thrusting graduates on rusting steel racers; shop assistants on secondhand hybrids; company directors on shiny folders; cockney geezers on dodgy knock-offs; p...

Anyone with two wheels in west London will know about Richmond Park . It's a splash of cool green in the middle of suburban concrete. It's surrounded by Roehampton high rises, A3 traffic jams and endless residential streets. On the proverbial clear day, you can see the London Eye , BT Tower and Canary Wharf from the middle of the park. It's home to a wide variety of wild - and not so wild - life. Rabbits, badgers, woodpeckers, squirrels, foxes, ring-necked parakeets, magpies and herons live there. 350 fallow and 300 red deer roam the park at will. They've been in the area since the 17th Century when Charles I enclosed the land for easy hunting. It remains one of the largest enclosed parklands in Britain. At the weekends Richmond Park is rammed with cyclists on the metalled roads, as well as on the off-road Tamsin Trail. Groups of club riders, most notably from London Dynamo , whiz round the perimeter in fully-fledged peleton formation. Scattered bunches of Kingston W...