I’m nearly home says adventurer

7:23pm Wednesday 25th July 2007

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ADVENTURER Jason Lewis from Bridport today vowed to finish his 13-year, round-the-world, human-powered expedition in London in the autumn.

He made the announcement as he mountain-biked north of Damascus in Syria, heading for home with more than 37,000 miles travelled.

Mr Lewis, 38, from Askerswell, will cycle through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Austria and Germany to Belgium for a Channel crossing.

He is still using the 15-year-old steel-frame bicycle on which he started the expedition.

Mr Lewis will cross the Channel in the £26,000 26ft pedal boat Moksha, which first made the crossing after the expedition started in July 1994.

The vessel, built in Exeter, Devon, is expected to arrive at Greenwich Rowing Club on the morning of October 6.

Expedition members and supporters will push her uphill to the Royal Observatory for the crossing of the zero-degree line of longitude from which Lewis started the odyssey.

On the day when he started, he was with fellow expedition member Steve Smith, who quit the trip in Hawaii in 1998 to follow other interests.

By the time she reaches the finish, Moksha will have crossed the Channel twice, as well as the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Timor Sea and part of the Indian Ocean.

Lewis said Moksha had suffered many near-fatal accidents, from colliding with a coral reef outside the Turks and Caicos Islands in 1995, to being rear-ended in a traffic jam going to a school presentation in Colorado in 1996, to capsizing and nearly sinking in a storm off Morro Bay, California, in 1998'.

"And yet," he said, "she has faithfully delivered every crew member who has ridden in her safely to the other side of every piece of water she has been asked to cross.

"Moksha is as much a part of the team as any of us, and you never leave a team member behind."

Since leaving London in 1994, Lewis has used kayaks, mountain bikes, in-line skates and Moksha to carry him round the world - and he swam across one river.

As well as visiting more than 800 schools since leaving England, the expedition has raised more than 63,000 US dollars (£31,500) for small-scale charitable causes along the way, such as orphanages and hospices for adults and children living with HIV and Aids.