Bicycling Through Paradise is a collection of twenty historically
themed cycling tours broken into 10-mile segments centered around
Cincinnati, Ohio. Written by two longtime cyclists--one a professor of
history and one an architect--the book is an affectionate, intimate, and
provocative reading of the local landscape and history from the
perspectives of cycling and Cincinnati enthusiasts. Tours, navigated by
Smythe and Hanlon, take cyclers past Native American sites, early
settler homesteads, and locations made know through recent Ohio
change-makers as navigated by the authors. With extensive details on
routes and sites along the way, tours between 20 and 80 miles in length
are designed for all levels of cyclists, and even the armchair explorer.
Riders and readers will visit towns called Edenton, Loveland, Felicity,
and Utopia. Along the journey, they'll encounter an abandoned Shaker
village near the Whitewater Forest and a tiny dairy house called
"Harmony Hill," the oldest standing structure in Clermont County, Ohio.
They'll also take in the view from the top of a 2,000-year-old, 75-foot
tall, conical Indian mound at Miamisburg. Riders can follow the Little
Miami Scenic Trail and take a detour to a castle on the banks of the
Little Miami River. Other sights include a full-scale replica of the
tomb of Jesus in Northern Kentucky and the small pleasures of public
parks, covered bridges, tree-lined streets, riverside travel, and
one-room schoolhouses. And if all this isn't exactly Paradise, well,
it's pretty close.
