IT THREATENED a minor puncture to Anglo-German relations and to ruin one man’s 44-year cycling odyssey.

Hours after arriving by ferry in Britain and after cycling 335,000 miles in 211 countries and territories, Heine Stücke had his bike stolen.

The German traveller was asleep in his tent in Portsmouth on Monday when the thief struck, riding away his trusty two-wheel sidekick and leaving him distraught.

Despite extensive searches of the city, assisted by police, Herr Stücke feared that he would not find his bike, which accompanied him to some of the world’s more far-flung places.

During his travels he has been shot at in Zambia, arrested in Cameroon, stung by swarms of bees in The Gambia and involved in accidents in Alaska, Iran, Chile and Guatemala. He has entered the record books as the world’s most travelled cyclist, at 335,000 miles and 211 countries and territories, all on the same modest boneshaker.

The doyen of the Lycra shorts set said: “I had just got off the ferry from Le Havre. I covered my bicycle with a canvas and tied it up with string and bungee cords outside my tent.

“I even left my tent door open so that I could see it, but when I awoke at 3am it had gone.” Herr Stücke, 66, has been on the move since he left his home town of Hövelhof in 1962 in pursuit of the freewheeling life and is revered in cycling circles, where he is known simply as the Bike Man.

Herr Stücke was planning to cycle to Greenland on the next leg of his trip, a journey that he feared he would not be making with his distinctive bike.

Until last night. To his relief, and presumably the Portsmouth tourist board’s, the cyclist was reunited with his bicycle after it was found abandoned in a park. He said: “It is not a very nice welcome to England, especially with it being in the first few hours, but I somehow have to blame myself because I take these risks.

“It has not made me think badly about England, these things happen, this is not the only country where similar things have happened.” Herr Stücke said that the last time his bike was stolen was in Siberia ten years ago and it was four days before it was returned to him.

Police searching for the bike would not have had too much trouble identifying it. It is an old-fashioned, German-built, three-speed-gear shopper-style bike painted black with a piece of wood attached to the frame showing a map of the world and Herr Stücke’s marathon journey around it.

When he last cycled into Britain in 1978, he parked the bike briefly outside the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and someone stole his saddle.

Herr Stücke holds the Guinness world record for the most countries visited by bicycle; he completed the list of sovereign states when he cycled through the Seychelles in 1996. Now he is visiting every territory that is not in itself an independent country.

He funds his lifestyle by selling brochures and postcards of his peripatetic life. “Most people want to do this kind of thing for a year or two after their studies, but then you do not stay free because you need money so you go back to your country and then the woman comes and there is a family and a mortgage.”

He travels light, with only a spare shirt, camera, binoculars, rice, noodles and sardines. Had he followed crime prevention advice he would have carried a padlock and chain and camped near a lamppost.

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