Wheels within wheels

the long version

In this beautifully written and searingly honest autobiography, the intrepid cyclist and traveler Dervla Murphy remembers her richly unconventional first thirty years. She describes her determined childhood self - strong-willed and beguiled by books from the first - her intermittent formal education and the intense relationship of an only child with her parents, particularly her invalid mother, whom she nursed until her death. Bicycling fifty miles in a day at the age of eleven, alone, it seems only natural that her first major journey should have been to cycle to India.