Watch video of Jason Lewis arriving in the Solomon Islands during the civil war

By any measure it’s a pretty long road trip. Thirteen years after setting off, a British adventurer is poised to complete one of the most epic journeys ever undertaken.

It is one that has seen Jason Lewis, 40, cover 46,400 miles across five continents, two oceans and one sea, and when he reaches the Globe rowing club in Greenwich, London, he will have become the first person to circumnavigate the world using only human power – that’s without the aid of any wind or motor-assisted vehicle.

Perhaps equally remarkably in these environmentally obsessed times Lewis says that when he began his journey it was nothing to do with promoting eco-friendly travel. Instead, he says he did it because it sounded fun.

His final destination, which he is scheduled to reach on Saturday, is less than five miles from the Reform club in Pall Mall, where Phileas Fogg ended his 80-day journey around the world in the Jules Verne novel.

But while Fogg’s journey, which included stints by boat, train and elephant, was a work of fiction, Lewis’s trek is very real. Since leaving London on July 12, 1994, Lewis has used kayaks, mountain bikes, Rollerblades and a 26ft pedal-powered boat to make his way around the planet. En route he has witnessed an armed coup in the Solomon Islands, braved pirate-infested waters off the coast of Somalia and been attacked by a 17ft saltwater crocodile in the Australian outback.

He has been robbed and beaten several times and arrested on charges of espionage in Egypt. He has suffered broken limbs, malaria, altitude sickness and a potentially fatal case of blood poisoning contracted 1,300 miles from land while pedalling between Hawaii and Tarawa in the Pacific.

He has also had some unexpected encounters, such as the time when he bumped into the actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman in Sudan.

“I was in one of the remotest places ever on a road with no tarmac, I’d been pushing my bike through the sand for days when two guys suddenly came over a sand dune on motorbikes,” he says. “They probably thought, ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere, blazing a trail through the desert and then we meet an English guy on an old steel-framed bike with no suspension’.”

The two Hollywood stars were part-way through their 15,000-mile bike trip down the length of Africa. In an interview with InGear in July (see tinyurl.com/yv6p8n) the pair emphasised the stripped-down nature of their expedition but compared with Lewis they were travelling in luxury. “They were really generous and gave me £1,000 to help my trip, but it was funny watching them with their three or four support vehicles and there I was with everything on my back.”

Last week Lewis, who grew up in Dorset, was relaxing in the relative luxury of a friend’s flat in Ostend, Belgium, preparing for the final leg of his quest, which will take him the last 100 miles to the finish line.

By the time you read this, he hopes – weather permitting – to be pedalling his boat somewhere in the Channel with the English coastline looming into sight. It will then take another three or four days to pedal up the Thames, because of the tides.

“It’s very hard to get my head around it all,” he says. “I’ve lived the life of a gypsy for so long, and being back in Europe is a real shock. I guess I’m just not used to being civilised again.”

The record attempt has not been without controversy. Last year Colin Angus, a Canadian explorer, appeared to have pipped Lewis to the post. However, although Angus did circle the globe his achievement has not been recognised by Guinness World Records because he did not cross the equator.

Lewis’s attempt has been broken down into 16 separate legs, each a major expedition. These have included crossing America from Miami to San Francisco on Rollerblades, cycling through Australia and using his pedal boat (called Moksha, which means liberation in Sanskrit) to travel between Hawaii and Australia.

According to the rules of engagement, Lewis had to start skating or rowing from exactly the same place he stopped each day, which meant taking a GPS fix of his position (these will need to be verified for the record to stand). He has only returned to England once, in 2000, when his father was diagnosed with cancer.

All of which prompts the simple question: why?

“I was 26 when we set out, and I thought it would be an amazing way to see the world,” he says. “I was also fascinated by the physical challenge. I’ve never been interested in a hugely successful career, nor bothered about starting a family, so I guess I was well matched to the challenge. And we never thought it would take so long – we thought it would take about three years.”

Instead it has taken more than 13 years, and has been a stop-start venture. There are two reasons for this. First, there has been the issue of finance. By the time Lewis finishes, the overall cost will be in the region of £250,000. A large portion of this needed to be raised en route.

This meant that after finishing each leg, Lewis often had to stop and spend a few months working to finance the next leg. He raised money by speaking engagements and regular jobs such as a stint working on a buffalo ranch in America. Since 2005 progress has been speeded up with sponsorship from Aberdeen Asset Management, the finance house.

The second reason for his slow progress has been sheer misfortune. The worst example of this occurred while Lewis was crossing America and was run over by a car in Colorado in 1995. He suffered two broken legs and spent nine months recovering.

The scariest moment of the whole trip happened while Lewis was kayaking off the coast of Queensland, Australia, and attracted the attentions of a giant crocodile. “As I was paddling towards the beach I saw two big crocs sunning themselves,” he says. “One of them started to come after me, and I’ve never been so frightened in my life. It was a primal fear – that of a dinosaur chasing after me.

“I had to fend it off with my paddle, which snapped in the process. Just the previous week someone had been taken by a crocodile in the same area.”

Though Lewis is completing the journey alone, the idea of the expedition was conceived in 1991 by Steve Smith, a friend whom Lewis met while studying at university in London.

The pair planned to complete the journey together, and after three years of intensive fundraising, which included designing and building their £26,000 boat, they set off from Greenwich in 1994. Over the course of five years they cycled across Europe to the Portuguese town of Lagos, before crossing the Atlantic in Moksha (which took 111 days); they both then crossed America on Rollerblades, before finally pedalling to Hawaii.

It was here that Smith decided to quit, leaving Lewis to carry on alone – though not entirely so. During the journey thousands of people have helped out. These range from the Dalai Lama, who is a patron, and friends and family members who have donated money, to the many people Lewis met on the way.

“We were often at the mercy of the goodness of people whenever we arrived in any new place – to give us a room to stay in, to help us raise money, and even come along for a while,” says Lewis.

The country Lewis will return to is a very different place from the one he left in 1994. John Major was prime minister, Wet Wet Wet’s single Love is All Around was No 1 and you could still buy a house for £50,000.

It’s all going to take some time getting used to and Lewis admits he doesn’t even know where he’s going to stay once he arrives home. “Transitioning back to normal life in one place will be a whole new adventure,” he says. “And England is as much a foreign country as any other.”

World beaters

The ancient mariners
Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer, captained the first expedition around the globe between 1519 and 1522, though he died before his ship made it home. Sir Francis Drake achieved the same feat 58 years later, to become the first Englishman to do so – and he managed to return with a ship laden with booty

The balloonist
The first nonstop balloon circumnavigation was made by Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss, and Briton Brian Jones in 1999 in the Breitling Orbiter 3 and took 19 days, 21 hours and 55 minutes

The solo sailor
In 2005 Dame Ellen MacArthur became the fastest solo sailor to circumnavigate the world when she clocked a time of 71 days, 14 hours and 18 minutes in her 75ft trimaran

The walker
The American David Kunst became the first recorded person to walk around the globe when he finished his journey in October 1974, having walked 14,450 miles across four continents

The cyclist
Heinz Stucke left his home in Germany on a three-speed bicycle in 1962, and has been cycling round the world ever since. He is reported to have covered 335,000 miles and claims never to have returned home. When he arrived in Portsmouth last year he had his bike pinched – it was later returned