A little while ago a book arrived at our palatial offices. Nothing unusual there - we get things arrive all the time. A glance at the cover revealed it to be "The Road Riders Guide to Northern Spain" which is, obviously a touring thing and so falls under the remit of our resident nomad (can you have such a thing?), Dick Henneman. The conversation went something like this:

"Dick, I've just received this touring guide"
"Yes, I know. I sent it to you."
"Oh, OK. Um, where did it come from?"
"I wrote it."
"Ah. OK."

Closer inspection does indeed reveal the name Dick Henneman on the cover, which gives the game a away a little, but in my defence I wasn't expecting to review it so I didn't look that hard at first.

Now while I have total faith in the ability of our team to remain objective, asking Dick to review his own book would be a bit unfair. So in the sure knowledge that as editor Dick can't fire me, I'm reviewing it instead.

The book is 100 odd ring bound pages with nicely varnished covers. It's A5 size which fits nicely into the top pocket of any tank bag you may care to think of, and the ring binding may not look as pretty as a conventional spine but it means that the book will fold completely flat without falling apart. Strike one for practicality, then.

The first third of the book is made up of generally useful stuff. Bike preparation, choosing your luggage, what to take with you and so on is included, as well as more specific stuff like a brief history of the area, some useful phrases and words, Spanish traffic laws and things like that. There are also lots of good suggestions about how to get there and what to do (apart from riding your bike) when you've arrived. All good stuff.

The rest of the book is a series of routes, all of which have been ridden and mapped by the author. There are pictures, a very useful diagram and a complete description of what you should expect to find on the trip, and they look a lot like this.

The black and white pictures are never going to grace the walls of the Guggenheim, but they are perfectly adequate to give you an idea of what to expect. Anyway, the idea is to go see the sights for yourself, not look at pictures, right?

Books like this always have the potential to be as dry as the warm sirocco blowing across the plain, but Dick has managed to keep his writing both informative and light. He usually manages to avoid being patronising and at the same time gets enough genuinely useful advice in that the book becomes a real asset. You're unlikely to keep turning the page to find out whodunnit, but at the same time you're not going to find yourself being anaesthetised by it either.

Even if he wasn't part of the team I would still recommend Dick's book for anyone planning on a visit to Northern Spain. And at £ 11.95 it's excellent value as well.

STOP PRESS -

Two more guides are about to come out. The first covers England and Wales, the second Scotland and Eire. Both should appear on shelves in your favourite bookshop around Easter.