Man who 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 is killed by car

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

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.”

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk 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