After 175 days and 18,602 miles riding his belt drive Santos tourer in a bid to raise £1.8m for research into Parkinson's Disease James Bowthorpe today made back to where it all started on the 29th of March, the bandstand at Hyde Park Corner.
The media were out in force to welcome him back and he rode the last leg accompanied by a peloton of cyclists. In a typically British touch a police car stopped to see what all the suspicious looking activity was about. Nothing though was going to spoil the moment and what has been without doubt a tremendous cycling acheivement.
road.cc's Simon MacMichael was on hand, fresh from the finish of the Tour of Britain, to grab a few words with James and quite a few pictures too. Check back tomorrow for more of both. For now though we'll just say: Well done Mr Bowthorpe - Chapeaux!
To give you a flavour of his final day in the saddle here are the last few tweets of the trip
I'm on the Surrey Bike Way, it's really beautiful, recommend it: http://yfrog.com/0rktbqj
about 5 hours ago from Tweetie
Great day for a bike ride, clear sky not hot! Anyone unsure of meet points they are at globecycle.org/blog : so glad the world isn't bigger.
about 7 hours ago from Tweetie
After all that time not losing anything, left my wallet on the ferry! They have it tho, so it's ok. Sitting w/ mum, waiting for 7am.
about 13 hours ago from Tweetie
Off I go to the Guildhall then final 80 miles. Can't wait for tomorrows lie-in! Will be great to cycle through hometurf today...
James rode around the world in record time to raise money for research into Parkinson's Disease, the hard part of that effort starts now, turning his record breaking feat into £1.8m – the target he has set himself to raise i you can help him get there by making a donation at www.justgiving.com/globecycle.
Plucked from the obscurity of his London commute back in the mid-Nineties to live in Bath and edit bike mags our man made the jump to the interweb back in 2006 as launch editor of a large cycling website somewhat confusingly named after a piece of navigational equipment. He came up with the idea for road.cc mainly to avoid being told what to do… Oh dear, issues there then. Tony tries to ride his bike every day and if he doesn't he gets grumpy, he likes carbon, but owns steel, and wants titanium. When not on his bike or eating cake Tony spends his time looking for new ways to annoy the road.cc team. He's remarkably good at it.