157 days so far, 15,276 miles so far, 12 days to go

Round-the-world cyclist James Bowthorpe is almost home. He has ridden 15,276 miles and has done 157 days so far since setting off from London at the end of March – and he only has 12 days to go. If it were a race, it would be the equivalent of seeing the finishing line in the distance.

In fact, James has been thinking about the end a lot as he asked Sustrans via the social networking site Twitter if they had a good route from Portsmouth to London. He tweeted at the weekend: “@sustrans have you got a good route from Portsmouth to London? Something fast please!” And when one was forthcoming, he replied: “Thanks for route suggestions; will peruse.”

James is on course for his homecoming in London and also recently tweeted: “hoping for morning of 13th into Portsmouth then it's a 120km skip and jump to Hyde Park, London, England.”

So where is James right now? Well, he is in Wilmington, Pennsylvania, heading towards Philadelphia as he continues his journey East, having already passed through Washington DC and Baltimore. He’s had to deal with his iPhone smashing due to going over a pothole, and three people have offered to sell him a gun for “protection”, to which he replied he felt safer without one.

After the US he will cross the Atlantic to Lisbon, on to Spain through either Madrid or Seville and then up through France and back to Blighty.

James is attempting to break the record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle, on a Santos tourer equipped with Gates belt drive and a Rohloff hub, and is doing it to raise £1.8 million for Parkinson's disease research. He has currently raised £50,193.38 towards that target.

And last week James’ Globe Cycle website experienced a surge in traffic after Lance Armstrong alerted his 1.7m followers on Twitter to James’s quest.

If you want to support James, you can follow his progress at his site www.globcycle.org or via his twitter fees at www.twitter.com/globecycle or see his progress in real time via the gps tracking site, www.whereintheworldisjames.com.