In the summer of 2020 sportswriter David Walsh asked Pippa York if she’d be interested to be his travelling companion for the Tour de France. The deal was that he would sort out the logistics beforehand, the hotels, the transport details and she would do the day to day tasks of getting them about and adding her insight occasionally. It would also mean she would return to the race she had ridden 11 times as Robert Millar. This is the resulting book: a unique and entertaining sporting odyssey, The Escape uses the minutiae of Pippa and David’s trip, and the iconic landmarks of the Tour de France, to explore her early life growing up in working class Glasgow; her entry into racing; the psychological aspects of the sport and how that manifested itself in her personality; her ups and downs as a competitor; her post-career and her eventual transition in her 40s.