Haynes has a manual for pretty much everything you might want to fettle, from a cat to a Vulcan bomber and that now includes road bikes. Written by Luke Edwardes-Evans, a former editor of Cycling Active and Cycle Sport magazines, it covers pretty much everything you need to know to get out on the road and keep your bike going.

There’s a foreword by ex-professional rider Sean Yates, before you get into the nitty gritty.

The Haynes Road Cycling Manual then carefully guides you through the world of road cycling, starting off by explaining the different types of riding you might enjoy, from leisure rides and commuting through to sportives, joining a club and racing.

Of course, the first thing you’ll need is a bike and the Haynes Road Cycling Manual guides you through the process of choosing and buying one. There’s also a section explaining the bike’s components and what to look out for. And further on Edwardes-Evans explains how to set up your bike so that you’re comfortable and efficient.

Then there’s all the other kit which goes with the bike. So there’s advice on clothing, accessories, storage and the dreaded turbo.

Having got through all that lot, you’re going to want to use your bike so the manual goes through how to get fit and organise your training both on and off the bike. Then there’s advice on how to ride safely on the road. And there’s more information on sportives and competition.

Finally, there’s a section of around 40 pages on how to maintain and repair your bike. This goes from the basics of cleaning and lubing right through to sorting out your bottom bracket. Each task has a box telling you what tools you’ll need.

It all adds up to enough breadth to understand road cycling, the options and what’s involved, along with the detail to get deeper into cycling as your enjoyment of the sport increases.

Rides of Passage will appeal to both cyclists and non-cyclists alike, as it deals as much with how a father-and-son relationship changes over two decades as it does with the literal and metaphorical ups and downs of cycling the entirety of France, from north to south coast.

Back in 1994, Jersey residents Matt Lamy and his dad Arthur decided to undertake a 1000km trans-France bike trip. Last year, the pair embarked on the same trip, some 21 years later - with a lot of water having travelled under the bridge between the two excursions.

Matt was 15 on the first trip, and his original journal entries, along with those of Arthur's, are presented at the start of each chapter. These are then followed by much more in-depth accounts of their more recent adventure. Each day of the trip has its own chapter.

Rather than a blow-by-blow account of every road travelled, the book is presented much more of a journey of the intervening 21 years, cleverly referenced to things that happen along the way. It feels much the same as the sort of memories and thoughts that pop into your head on a long ride, triggered by sights, sounds, smells or places.

Now a father himself, Matt's description of his altered relationship with his dad will ring true with many people. Equally, Arthur's account of the relationship with his son will be recognisable to anyone whose kids have left home and started their own family.

It's a humorous and sometimes moving account. Two opposing views of the same situation are dealt with by the switching of text between the two authors, so it feels like you're listening to a conversation.

The central colour photo section adds life to the narrative, as much showing some of the oddities spotted by the roadside as much as the charming views across France. Some of the best images are the recreations of original photos, with the more mature pair striking the same poses in the same places as they did 21 years before.

As well as relationships and riding, there are descriptions of the places and people that the pair encounter along the way, good and bad. Fatigue after a hard day occasionally leads to a cutting assessment of the French way of doing things: a recurring theme is the difficultly in finding a shop that's open.

There's also a wince-worthy description of a chronic ailment caused by one of the author's error in fitting a brand new leather Brooks saddle right before the trip... and the methods employed in trying to relieve the pain.

A companion website gives more in-depth details of the exact route taken and the bikes used, plus there are more photos.

A little like Garmin's 800 series bike computer, there's so much going on with the Hero3 that it takes a seriously dedicated person to get to the bottom of all the available options and probably a college course in cinematography to make the best use of it all.

>>> Buyer's guide to bike and helmet cameras

But, just like the Garmin, you can still get a lot out of it even if you don't need all of the features.

Lighter and thinner than previous versions, it puts less strain on the mounts so moves less and if helmet mounted is less obtrusive.

With so many options it'd be easy to get lost but GoPro seem to have managed to nail the trick where you can make it work for you without getting lost in the sub menus, meaning it's easy to cherry pick the functions you want to use.

"Welcome to the true life of a tour cyclist," reads the blurb of Domestique, the interesting and revealing autobiography by former Mapei, Liquigas and Lotto rider and current Garmin DS Charly Wegelius.

We're more accustomed to reading the life stories of the sport's winners and big-name riders, yet the winlessness of Wegelius's professional career is this 300-page book's USP.

He recalls being told just seven days before the 2002 Vuelta how he was going to ride his first Grand Tour, despite being injured from a crash. Then there's the difficulty in finding teams ("If Mapei had been DHL, De Nardi was the Post Office," he writes about dropping down a division after the former team folded), incompetent managers and the difficulty of dealing with team leaders (Cadel Evans is singled out as particularly difficult).

Often funny and at times brutally honest, the book charts Wegelius's career from an enthusiastic youngster who was one of cycling's hot properties to the man whose obsessive-compulsive behaviour meant he travelled to races with duct tape to ensure he could remove any trace of light from ?hotel rooms.

It was an unwritten rule that only great champions could attempt the Hour record: Desgrange, Petit-Breton, Coppi, Anquetil and Merckx. But on July 17, 1993, an unknown Scot on a bike made out of bits of old washing machine broke that rule and the record.

Six days later, a Liverpudlian - better known for winning the Olympic pursuit - on a space-age carbon-fibre bike, stole it from him.

The mainstream media, unaccustomed to British success in cycling, fixated on the equipment.

Twenty years on, the time is right to tell the story of the men who rode the machines. Ex-Cycle Sport journalist Edward Pickering tracks down all the key figures, including Chris Boardman and Graeme Obree themselves, to examine the legendary rivalry. ?A very human tale emerges: ?two men apparently diametrically opposed in their approaches are in the end not so different in their desire to succeed.

Pickering traces current British success back to the innovative sports science-based coaching pioneered by Peter Keen, with Boardman the original lab rat. And if Boardman was the first of a new order of champions, Obree was the last of the old ones - a truly independent racer.

Get your chamois cream at the ready for 12 Months in the Saddle, the new book that tells the story of two amateur cyclists, John Deering and Phil Ashley, who plan their calendar around a year on two wheels.

Taking in one of Europe's best known and iconic rides for each month, the duo ride the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix with Team Sky to reconnoitre the route ahead of Paris-Roubaix, before attaching their own frame numbers for the Tour of Flanders sportive.

The next stop on their journey is Mont Ventoux, then it's back to Blighty for the Dragon Ride and other routes closer to home.