Graham Watson’s Tour de France Travel Guide £17.99

These days, legendary cycling photographer Graham Watson spends most of his life on the back of a motorcycle, following and recording the activities of the professional road cycling season.

Back in 1977, however, he was a callow young fan on an organized trip to Paris to see the last stage of the Tour de France. Since then he has covered 31 editions of the world’s greatest bike race, both by bicycle in the early years and, more recently, on the back of a moto. In the process, Watson has accumulated a vast wealth of experience in the art of watching the three-week stage race.

It is not as simple as it sounds for reasons explained in Watson’s Tour de France Travel Guide, which leaves no aspect of the race follower’s life unexamined from getting around and finding a good spot from which to watch the race pass to making sure of a decent meal at the end of the day.

Indeed, so many are the pitfalls waiting for the novice Tour enthusiast, it is surprising that such a volume has not appeared previously. Here it is, however, and very good it is too. Apart from anything else, it is engagingly and accessibly written and conveys the writer’s evident enthusiasm for the delights of French cuisine, landscape and winemaking even as it explains how to get along with recalcitrant French waiters or choose wine in a way that will impress them.

Add in potted histories of some of the greats of the Tour since Watson started following it, almost lyrical evocations of the great battlegrounds of the Alps, Pyrenees and Massif Central and a selection of agreeably informative if small-scale maps and you have a book that is not just a guide to the Tour de France. It is worth reading as a guide to France itself, with a bunch of cycle racing thrown in for good measure.