Reuters.com
Wed May 10, 2006. LONDON (Reuters) - A German cyclist who has ridden 335,000 miles in almost 44 years on the same bike and then had it stolen in Britain celebrated Wednesday after it was recovered.
Heinz Stucke had just arrived in Portsmouth, southern England, on the latest leg of a global cycle ride which he began in 1962 when thieves stole his bike as he slept in his tent.
Distraught, he appealed to police and media, telling the Portsmouth News: "I would do anything to get my bike back, I'm emotionally attached to it."
He told BBC radio Wednesday he was rejoicing after police told him the bike had been found abandoned in a park.
"I ... expected it to be found, because it's not a flashy one, it's not an expensive one," he said.
The bike, an old-fashioned, black, German-built three-gear cycle, has taken Stucke through more than 200 countries and into the record books as the world's most traveled cyclist since he set out from his home in Hovelhof, Germany, in 1962.
He has painted a map of the world marked with a route of his journeys on to the frame.
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