Vuelta Skelter. Riding the Remarkable 1941 Tour of Spain: Tim Moore

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

Julian Berrendero`s victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Franco`s 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 Berrendero`s story, and having borrowed an old road bike with the great man`s 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 war`s still-vivid tragedies, and finds the gregarious but impressively responsible locals torn between welcoming their nation`s only foreign visitor, and bundling him and his filthy bike into a vat of antiviral gel.