Vuelta Skelter

Tim Moore completes his epic (and ill-advised) trilogy of cyclings Grand Tours.

Julian Berrenderos victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Francos concentration camps, punishment for expressing Republican sympathies during the civil war. Seventy nine years later, perennially over-ambitious cyclo-adventurer Tim Moore developed a fascination with Berrenderos story, and having borrowed an old road bike with the great mans name plastered all over it, set off to retrace the 4,409km route of his 1941 triumph - in the midst of a global pandemic.

What follows is a tale of brutal heat and lonely roads, of glory, humiliation, and then a bit more humiliation. Along the way Tim recounts the civil wars still-vivid tragedies, and finds the gregarious but impressively responsible locals torn between welcoming their nations only foreign visitor, and bundling him and his filthy bike into a vat of antiviral gel.