Scots adventurer cyclist Mark Beaumont tackles 127-year world record on a penny farthing
The cyclist will tell the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival about his exploits in cycling round the world last year
ADVENTURER cyclist Mark Beaumont is getting back on a different type of saddle by trying to smash a world record on a penny farthing.
Mark, 34, is trying to beat a 127- year record set at the end of the 19th century for going further than anyone else on the ancient contraption in an hour.
The endurance biker hit the headlines by cycling round the world in less than 80 days and once nearly died when the boat he was rowing across the Atlantic capsized.
He’s trying to better the record set by Frederick J. Osmond who cycled nearly 24 miles in an hour in 1891.
But he admitted he’s been getting baffled looks from bemused locals while he trains in Edinburgh.
The married dad-of-two said: “I have been training hard around the parks of Edinburgh and you get some funny looks.
“The hour record is 23 and a half miles which is pretty nuts on a Penny Farthing but I have been quite enjoying not training ultra-endurance – this just me and my mates wanting to do something eccentric and daft.”
The cyclist will tell the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival about his exploits in cycling round the world last year in 78 days, 14 hours and 40 minutes.
But it is the Penny Farthing record which is taking up all his energy at the moment after taking delivery of a custom-made version of the old-fashioned bike on January 2.
He said his mates who welcomed him on Penny Farthings in the centre of Paris at the end of his round the world ride came up with the idea of cracking the 129-year-old record at Herne Hill Velodrome in Surrey in June.
He said: “Everything I have ever done has felt like a natural stepping stone to the next expedition but the honest truth is that going round the world in 80 days doesn’t naturally lead to anything – that was my Everest.
“Last year was completely professional and I don’t want to take life quite so seriously this year.”
In 2012, the TV personality and five crewmates had to be rescued when their boat capsized in January during an attempt to set a record for rowing across the ocean.
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They were 500 miles from completing the 3,000-mile crossing from Morocco to Barbados.
Mark also holds the record for cycling the length of Africa after going from Cairo to Cape Town in only 42 days in 2015.
In 2009 he pedalled 15,000 miles from Anchorage, Alaska, to Ushuaia in Argentina.
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