Every Saturday the travel supplements in the newspapers try to whip up a lather of enthusiasm about exotic destinations, but there’s no escaping the fact that a great deal about international travel is indisputably loathsome. The plane trip to your destination would have to top the list of the most detestable things about going overseas.

Apart from the confined space, the execrable food, the inconsiderate behaviour of your fellow passengers – any one of whom could turn out to be a holiday-ruining terrorist – there’s also the problem of your inability to get any physical exercise for hours on end.

And when we disembark, many of us head straight for a train or bus. Whenever I go on sedentary journeys like this, I can feel the cholesterolic sludge congealing in my arteries within hours of sitting down. For those of us who are addicted to a regular infusion of exercise-generated endorphins, travel will ideally involve plenty of self-generated movement – such as walking or cycling – in addition to using motorised transport.

Medical researchers have in recent years told us that extended periods of sitting have a deleterious effect on our health; parking your butt on a chair for hours on end has even been described as ‘the new smoking’. More than a few of us have heeded this warningand therefore don’t want to use our precious holiday weeks vegetating in a bus, train or car as we trundle across Europe or Asia. We want to get out there and walk, pedal or kayak our way across beautiful scenery. Thousands have trodden the path of Spain’s Camino de Santiago, which is a laudable achievement, but the slow pace of walking limits the amount of ground that you can cover.

Cycling, on the other hand, enables you to get your endorphin infusion while chewing up the kilometres much more rapidly than a hiker. This new book from Lonely Planet is filled with suggested routes in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania that will get you excited and pumping up the tires on your old boneshaker.

The rides range from languid circuits on dead-flat paths around Lake Constance (which lies on the borders of Germany, Austria and Switzerland) to a challenging four-month African tour from Cairo to Cape Town (but that tour does include 30 off-the-bike days for sightseeing). Little coloured bike symbols next to the ride names on the contents page denote the level of difficulty.

Don’t expect, however, that this book alone will be enough to enable you to plan your tour.Twenty-eight cyclist–writers have collectively written about 50 routes, but the narrative consists largely of their personal experiences rather than step-by-step guides. This is probably as it should be, because the book’s purpose is clearly to inspire rather than bore you with a lot of detail when you’re not even sure at this stage if you want to go. But there is a short section – titled ‘Toolkit’ – at the end of each route description that provides info about useful websites, the distance of each route, when to ride and what to take. But you’ll still need to do further research to plan your trip with a finer level of detail.

But once you clap your eyes on the jaw-droppingly exhilarating photos you’ll be taking your bike to the local cyclery to get it in bike-touring condition. The pictures of the Dolomites in Italy and the Taktsang Monastery in Bhutan (which looks like an Asian Hogwarts Castle) made me want to teleport with my bike to faraway lands without delay.

Reviewed by Tim Graham