The perfect way to beat the coronavirus blues if you're a cycling fan

The Beast, The Emperor and The Milkman: A Bone-shaking Tour through Cycling's Flemish Heartlands by Harry Pearson, £10.99, published by Bloomsbury Sport

A Venn diagram of the ideal reader profile for this book might put me slap bang in the centre. As a bike racing fan who believes the best of the sport is to be found in Flanders in the spring and has a deep affection for the people and places of northern Belgium, plus a long-held admiration of Harry Pearson's work, surely I fit into the main categories.

I'm also part of an unusual subset: I spent two teenage summers in Ghent as part of a British enclave, racing at the next level down from the pros, riding the twisting, cobbled roads made famous by the Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders). This great adventure was enlivened by some inventive accidents involving the British lads, which included crashing into an open cesspit inconveniently positioned for anyone who didn't make it round a 90-degree corner.