A cyclist who pedalled the world for more than 40 years, braving raging rivers, a lion and the hospitality of an Eskimo princess, has been killed by a hit-and-run driver in Greece.

Ian Hibell, 74, was a well-known figure in the world of long-distance cycle touring, setting several records and pedalling the equivalent of ten times around the Equator.

He died on the road between Athens and Salonika when he was hit by a car whose driver was apparently in a race with another motorist. Although the driver fled the scene, he was arrested two days later and charged with causing death by dangerous driving.

Mr Hibell, from Brixham in Devon, set out on his travels in 1963 after asking his employer for a two-year sabbatical. He returned ten years later, having become the first cyclist to ride from Cape Horn to Alaska, among other journeys. Into the Remote Places, the book he wrote about his adventures, inspired countless other cyclists to pack their saddlebags, and led to regular appearances on television on programmes such as Blue Peter and as a lecturer.

Mr Hibell rarely kept to the beaten track, managing to cross mangrove swamps, mountain ranges and even the Sahara desert on two wheels. He was shot at by bandits, had his tent eaten by tropical ants, was sniffed by a lion and chased by elephants.

He was also welcomed by a Dayak headman in Borneo and African chiefs in the days before every jungle trail had been trodden by backpackers and gap-year students. He estimated that he had used more than 800 cycle repair kits after covering at least 6,000 miles a year for 40 years, the distance from Earth to the Moon.

A family friend, Nicola Henderson, said yesterday that Mr Hibell had died on August 23. “He gained a taste for travelling during his RAF service in the 1950s. He has pushed, dragged or carried his bike from the fringes of Antarctica to the jungles of the Amazon, from the Arctic to the remoter islands of Indonesia,” she said.

Mr Hibell, a bachelor, died at the scene of the crash. Arrangements are under way for his body to be flown back to Britain for a family funeral in south Gloucestershire.

in 2005, he said: “Every so often a bird gets up and flies some place that it’s drawn to. I don’t suppose it could tell you why, but it does it anyway.”

Pedal power

— A cyclist can travel 1,037km (644 miles) on the energy equivalent of one litre of petrol

— Regular cycling can make you as fit as someone who is ten years younger

— A cyclist consumes 1/50th of the oxygen of a car making the same journey

— A twice daily half-hour commute will, over a year, consume the energy equivalent of 24lb of fat

— In 1949, 34 per cent of all mechanised journeys were made by bicycle. Fifty years later that figure had fallen to 2 per cent

— The rate of serious heart disease for civil servants who cycle 20 miles or more a week is 50 per cent lower than for their sedentary colleagues

Source: Somerset County Council

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