BY AMANDA STEWART
Writing a fun biking guide incorporating a tour of coffee and treats was a cakewalk for mum of two.
BIKES and bakes have been united to form a perfect union for author and cycling enthusiast Heth Miller.
Heth, who quotes her age as being the far side of 50, has crafted a book that encompasses 25 rides for adults and children across 683 miles of quiet roads and 68 independent coffee and cake stops.
Le Great British Tour de Cake, as the book is modestly titled, claims to be — with cake-filled tongue firmly in cheek — the world’s most comprehensive guide to cycling and eating cake in the sleepy lanes of Oxfordshire, West Berkshire and Wiltshire.
The book came about because Heth, a mother of two teenage boys and an instructor for Bikeability, a national award provider for cycle training, “was looking for a flexible job that I could do around the kids”.
“I’d written half a guide book before in my 20s (The Bradt Guide to Zanzibar — by Heather Tyrrell (me) and David Else — wrote the other half) and I thought I would write again.
“However, being married with kids I couldn’t suddenly hare off to South Korea, where I have cycled extensively, and write a cycling guide to that so I knew I had to stay local.”
Heth, who lives in South Oxfordshire, says: “Bradt, my previous travel guide publisher, wrote regional cycling guides and didn’t have one for my area, so I put the idea to Bradt that I could write one for them. They were vaguely interested but they wanted me to write in the exact style of their cycling books — which they also told me weren’t really selling that well.
‘I felt that cycling guides weren’t selling well because they were quite hard to read, had no coffee stops in them’
“I read one of their cycling books — well, I tried to read one but got about three pages in — and thought, ‘I simply can’t write in this style. It is too dry, and too technical for me’. I therefore came to the conclusion that if I was going to write a cycling guide I had to do it in my own way.
“And it absolutely had to have three things: be easy to read; be funny and have a shed-load of cake in it. Bradt did not want an individual style — they were very nice about it, to be honest — but wanted something that fit in their portfolio.”
Heth adds: “I felt that cycling guides weren’t selling well because they were quite hard to read, had no coffee stops in them (and cyclists LOVE a coffee shop), and didn’t often have the GPX files [a route breakdown] which are so crucial to a cyclist.
“Plus, there isn’t a single one with an ounce of humour in that I’ve found. And so off I went.”
It took Heth 14 months to write Le Great British Tour de Cake from start to finish, but she knew many of the rides she features because she had cycled in the areas she wrote about since she was a youngster.
“And I took every single photo in the book. When I set out to write it I thought perhaps I needed to invest in a new bike as that is what all other bike authors do. Then again, they are all men with contracts with bike companies and then they proceed to talk — at length — in their books about their new bikes.
“Anyway, then I thought, ‘but why do I need a new bike? Just because every other author wangs on about a new bike it doesn’t mean I need one. Plus, mine, whilst old, is still perfectly good’.
“Then I realised that what I did need was a camera I could take decent pictures on. So I invested in a new mobile phone and that is what every single photo in the book is taken on. I learnt as I went along and accordingly the photos got better the more I took.”
Heth grew up in Upper Basildon, with an older brother and younger sister and enjoyed a “very, very happy childhood. We were left largely to our own devices so spent all our time outdoors climbing trees, running around the village or haring around on bikes, dangerously. No gears, no helmet, often towing a dangerously designed go-cart behind a bike.”
Her years at secondary school were no fun as she was “not academic at all and did not enjoy school. I was completely written off by the large majority of the teachers. I was a late grower so while fairly sporty, because I was small and wiry, not in demand for any sports teams.
“I did English A Level – really because there were few other subjects I could do, I was hopeless at subjects such as maths. My English teacher said for my predictions to my parents, ‘Well, she’s almost certainly going to get a D. But let’s all pray for a C shall we?’”
Heth didn’t know what she wanted to do in life, only that she “wanted to leave school”. “But having got totally fed up at school with all the teachers telling me I wouldn’t amount to anything, in my upper sixth year I worked like an absolute dog. I came out with grades about five times higher than anyone expected and I ended up going to Durham University.”
She smiles when she recalls that her parents had “actually thought I’d been given the wrong grades when the A-level results came out and rang the school to check they were correct”.
After leaving Durham, Heth was employed in the travel industry until the age of 39, working her way up from holiday rep to department head of a big travel company, but quit to bring up her two young children.
She adds: “After working on a voluntary basis as an advocate for action for children (in child protection) I re-entered the working world aged 50 as a Bikeability instructor, contracted to West Berks. I absolutely LOVE this job. I also started writing aged 50.”
She says: “As a Bikeability instructor I go into local primary schools and teach Years 5 and 6 how to cycle on the roads with traffic. I work in a team of nine instructors — we go out in pairs to schools to teach the kids.
“It is a brilliant job. Totally knackering as you can never take your eyes off the kids or traffic for a second. However, the kids are superb. And where else can you do a job where you get a kid a) pole dancing around a lamppost, b) cycling straight into somebody’s garden because they are following a cat or c) taking off their helmet, strapping it over their face and saying ‘I am your faaaaather’ in a Darth Vader voice … some of the kids are pretty naughty.”
She adds: “We teach in all weathers, getting cold and wet in winter and warm-ish in summer. I love working outside, even when I can’t feel my fingers, toes and have rain dripping down my neck.”Heth had moved to Upper Basildon aged three and returned to the area aged 40. “I’ve lived in Goring and Streatley ever since. I adore the countryside where we live and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”
She adds: “I always cycled as a kid. With no television it was what we did for fun at the weekends. I also used to use my bike to get to the railway station, for instance. Mum and Dad had one car but if we wanted to get somewhere we’d have to cycle to the station and take it from there.
“I returned to cycling when my boys were little, putting them on the back of the bike to get them to school and around the village. When my youngest was about four years old I started a village bike group, which has been going ever since.”
Although Heth has had difficulties securing a suitable publisher she says that she has “absolutely loved cycling new routes with friends, old and new. Days spent on a bike chatting with a friend in beautiful countryside is my idea of heaven and stopping at a tiny coffee shop in an idyllic village location. What’s not to love?
“I’ve also met so many new, lovely and enterprising people who work in all the little coffee shops I feature. They are truly innovative business men and women and its been a pleasure getting to know them.
“For every publisher that has been brutal to me there has been a coffee shop owner who has been superbly positive, friendly and encouraging.”