172 Days, 17,350 miles, 3 Days to go!
Round-the-world cyclist James Bowthorpe is bang on target to ride into London on Saturday to complete an 18,000-mile journey that began on a chilly Sunday morning back in March. If you want to welcome him back check out the itinerary for his final leg from Portsmouth to London below.
And when he rolls into Hyde Park on Saturday evening after almost six months in the saddle, he’ll have broken the world record, currently held by Scotsman Mark Beaumont, by a full three weeks. And if you are anywhere between Portsmouth and London on Saturday you might see him on the very final leg… if you're out for a ride you could probably join him for a mile of two.
James makes landfall in the UK at Portsmouth on Saturday morning, and, pausing only for a fry-up at 7am at the ferry terminal café, will head straight for the capital, and via Twitter he has encouraged other cyclist to join him on the last leg of his journey. He’s scheduled to make a half-hour tea stop at Richmond Park’s Roehampton Gate café at 4pm, before riding to Hyde Park, with arrival at the Serpentine anticipated between 6pm and 6.30pm.
During his epic ride, James has so far raised some £55,000 towards a target of £1.8 million to fund research into Parkinson’s Disease.
Currently near Bordeaux as he pedals his way up through France, the trip has taken James through Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia, Australia and North America.
Along the way, he has ridden 120-mile days and even a couple of 150-milers. He’s been warned of bandits in Romania, escaped kidnap in Iran, battled through heat and illness in India – where he even had a ride-through part in the elections there – met politicians in Australia and learned what a very big place it is, and hit a wombat and endured a spate of punctures in Canada… possibly the wombat’s revenge.
As James has clocked up the miles, his exploits have attracted attention from more and more people and he recently received a big boost when Lance Armstrong alerted his 1.7 million followers on the social networking website Twitter to James’s travels.
You can follow James's progress on the final leg of his trip on twitter, via his Globecycle website, or follow his progress live on www.whereintheworldisjames.com and you can make a donation at www.justgiving.com/globecycle.
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.