A Scottish man became the fastest to cycle around the world yesterday when he arrived in Paris after nearly seven months on the road. Mark Beaumont, 25, completed the trip in 195 days and six hours - beating the current record of 276 days.
After almost seven months of dodging drivers, sleeping rough and struggling to get enough to eat, Beaumont is expected to enter the Guinness Book of Records, once the feat is verified.
Carrying 80kg of gear, including a tent, on a £2,500 road bike, Beaumont beat the previous record by 81 days. He said the last two days on the road had been hard, but "about 40km from Paris the adrenaline kicked in and I flew up the last hills".
His trip took him through 20 countries on a route which included Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Holland last August took four hours; Germany three days. He endured floods and road rage and was knocked off his bike in Louisiana in the US by a motorist who drove through a red light.
At one point, also in the US, he found himself at a motel which turned out to be full of crack addicts, who stole his wallet and BBC camera. But once he was back in the saddle he cycled through four US states - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida - in two days.
He kept a web diary, allowing fans to follow his journey, and the small crowd that saw him off at the Arc de Triomphe on August 5 last year had grown into a huge one, including the British ambassador to France and a media scrum, when he completed the trip yesterday. "I could hardly get over the finishing line because so many people turned out," he said.
Beaumont, a vegetarian, had to eat 6,000 calories a day to keep his energy levels up. This meant he sometimes had to eat meat to rack up the calorie count. In the outback in Australia he relied on £2 Mars bars and £3 tins of baked beans in an area where petrol stations and shops only crop up every few hundred miles.
En route to Lahore he came down with food poisoning and had a stomach like "a tumble drier". He said yesterday that could have gone faster if it hadn't been for the junk food he had had to eat in Australia and the US. "There were no healthy options - and it had a massive effect on my mental focus and body strength."
Terrifying experiences included cycling in Istanbul, a city of 15 million people, which "without comparison is the scariest cycling I have ever done".
He changed routes to avoid the insurgency in southern Thailand when crossing into Malaysia.
The Glasgow University graduate hopes to have raised £18,000 for charities including Country Holidays for Inner City Kids, Edinburgh Cyrenians Trust, Tusk Trust, and Community Action Nepal.
Beaumont started the Artemis World Cycle Challenge with the aim of beating the record of 276 days, 19 hours and 15 minutes, held by Steven Strange from Devon.
Scottish Olympic cyclist Chris Hoy passed on his congratulations. "I think it's an amazing feat he's achieved," he said.
Beaumont's first long-distance bike ride was from John O'Groats to Land's End at the age of 12.
Guinness World Records spokeswoman Amarilis Espinoza said they would review the attempt: "Our researchers will go through the paperwork, but it has been logged as an official attempt and it seems everything is in order."
