Riding in The Zone Rouge
Riding in the Zone Rouge
Published in 2019 to high critical acclaim, and shortlisted for the Sports Book of The Year, Riding in The Zone Rouge is a book about a long-forgotten bicycle race across the battlefields of the Western Front in April 1919.
In appalling, freezing weather the 87 riders rode 2,000km across the brutalised roads of Belgium and northern France barely six months after the end of WW1. Each day's stage was around 300km in length and took at least 14 hours of hard physical effort on terrible roads. Many of the riders had fought on the battlefields they traversed, and the race was so hard that only 21 riders finished race,
Although nominally about a bicycle race, this is really a tale of endurance and the indomitable human spirit.
