cycling – Stanfords Blog

Author talk: A Ride Across America by Simon Parker

Last night we had a wonderful evening hearing Simon Parker talk about his 4,000-mile adventure. A Ride Across America is an account of his journey through the small towns and big issues of the USA.

Book Launch: Potholes and Pavements by Laura Laker

Last week we hosted the launch of Laura Laker’s debut book Potholes and Pavements: A Bumpy Ride On Britain’s National Cycle Network. This is a unique journey around the UK’s National Cycle Network and one journalist’s quest to investigate the state of our country’s cycling.

What if we were less reliant on our cars? What if there were safe cycling paths to take us places instead? What if those paths led to the next town, the next village and the countryside beyond?

This was the dream of a group of Bristolian idealists in the 1970s when they founded Britain’s National Cycle Network, which now runs to nearly 13,000 miles across the country. Journalist Laura Laker sets off on an odyssey around the UK to see where the NCN began, and where it is now.

What has gone right – and wrong – with this piece of national infrastructure? Why is it run by a charity whose CEO once admitted ‘we’ve had enough of it being crap, we need to fix it’? Laura lifts the lid on this maddening, patchy, and at times dangerous network, and the similarly precarious politics and financing that make it what it is.

She discovers beauty, friendship and adventure along the way, from the Cairngorms to Cornwall, from the Pennines to the South Wales coast. On her mission to pin down what the NCN is and what it means to those who use it, she also meets up with high-profile travelling companions, including Chris Boardman and Ned Boulting.

In a country where 71% of trips are less than five miles, two thirds of Britons say they want to cycle more and doing so could help our climate, health and wellbeing. Laura is on a mission to see if we can make that dream a reality.

Potholes and Pavements: A Bumpy Ride On Britain’s National Cycle Network. is available now for £16.99. All our copies are signed by the author while stocks last.

Join Laura Laker as she talks about her book at Stanfords London on the 21st May and at Stanfords Bristol on 23rd May. See our events page for tickets and more details.

Author Talk: The Beacon Bike by Ed Peppitt

Last week we hosted an event with Ed Peppitt where he spoke about his new book The Beacon Bike: Around England and Wales in 327 Lighthouses.

Tips for Successful Family Adventures

Family Adventures is a practical guide to involving babies and children in all sorts of adventures, whether it be cycling, camping, paddling, hiking, swimming or outdoor holidays.

As soon as Bex Band, founder of the UK’s largest women’s adventure community, Love Her Wild, announced she was pregnant with her first child, the sympathy began. ‘Enjoy your adventures while you can’, ‘It’s going to be a big shock not being able to travel as much’, and ‘Aren’t you going to miss adventuring?’It seemed as though having children was a death sentence when you’re an outdoor adventurer.

But it really doesn’t have to be that way. Yes, it’s a scary prospect – how do you keep them safe? Where do they sleep? What equipment do you need? – but it’s totally doable.

This guide is full of useful information (such as what to pack when camping with an infant or how to keep children safe in open water), invaluable tips (family games you can play around a campfire or how to keep morale up in bad weather) and plenty of honesty around things going wrong (poo-explosion on a wild camp, anyone?). Experiences from adventuring families also provide a plethora of insights so that you’re well equipped to make your family adventuring dreams a reality.

Here, Bex Band offers some tips for successful family adventures:

Adventuring with children is very different from when you are managing a trip with just adults. Packing, logistics, managing distances and food intake – it’s all different. It took us a while to get the balance right and to realise where the struggles would come from and what to let go of.

Stanfords Event: ‘Cycling the North Coast 500’ with Mike Wells

The bike racks all around Covent Garden were full last night as we welcomed lots of cyclists to hear Mike Wells talk about his Cicerone guide Cycling the North Coast 500: A cyclist-friendly guide to Scotland’s NC500.

Map of the Month: The Ultimate UK Cycle Route Planner

‘It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.’- Hemmingway

Our Map of the Month for March is The Ultimate UK Cycle Route Planner.

This best selling UK cycle publication gives an overview of all the main signed UK cycle routes – the only publication that has all these together on one single map.

This map features:

‘8,000 Miles in the Andes by Bamboo Bike’ with Kate Rawles: Stanfords Travel Writers Festival 2024

From Destinations: The Holiday & Travel Show in London’s Olympia, The Stanfords Travel Writers Festival welcomes author and eco adventurer Kate Rawles. She talks to author Ben Aitken about cycling the length of the Andes on an eccentric bicycle she built herself.

Pedalling hard for thirteen months, she witnesses the devastation of goldmining and oil drilling but finds hope in the incredible people working to regenerate habitats and communities. As she reaches the ‘end of the world’, she realises that to tackle biodiversity loss we all have a role to play.

European Cycling Maps

“It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.” -Ernest Hemingway.

If you are feeling inspired to plan a cycling adventure, here are some of our favourite cycling maps to take you around Europe.

Map of the Month: Wheelie great BRAND NEW cycling maps

Our Map of the Month for August is not just one map, we are excited to introduce the first five maps in a brand new series that will soon cover the whole of the UK.

Cycle Maps UK are produced at a scale of 1:100 000 showing important features including the National cycle Network. Sections on road, off road and traffic free are all shown in differing colours along with their route number. Other roads and their classification are shown enabling you to link rides or explore sections and discover new routes at home or further afield.

Monuments and Markers along the Great North Road

Are you the kind of person who can’t walk past a plaque or a monument without reading every single word? Here, Steve Silk, the author of The Great North Road, talks us through his five favourites along the 400 miles between London and Edinburgh.

As a crucial route linking London to Edinburgh, the Great North Road has been Britain’s backbone for centuries. Kings, queens, soldiers, rebels, mail coaches and highwaymen used the road to get from A to B. One hundred years later journalist Steve Silk went on pilgrimage by bike to explore its history. At a slower pace it’s easier to notice key markers and signs of the past that surround us…