REAL RIDER

Dean Stott from Aberdeen broke two world records cycling through the Americas and made it home for a very special wedding...

Ihad set out cycling the Pan American Highway, from Argentina to Alaska, aiming to raise £1million for the Heads Together charity [led by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke of Sussex]. I’d served alongside Prince Harry in the army so the charity is one I’m keen to help. When researching the ride I noticed that most riders go from Alaska down through to Argentina. I thought it would be better to get all the big problems – the language barrier, bureaucracy, danger – out the way by going south to north. I didn’t factor in the 40mph-plus crosswind I had from the start at Ushuaia in Patagonia, the southernmost tip of Argentina.

Once I hit Peru that had become a tailwind for almost 2500km and I made up a lot of lost time. Then I got food poisoning – a pitfall of eating on the road – before riding through the Chilean desert and up to Cartagena, Colombia.

Mexico went from being 40 degrees-plus one moment to 8 degrees, and a thunderstorm washed off my sunscreen. I’ve had huge mountain climbs, followed by miles of flat terrain. Honduras and Nicaragua were amazing for the scenery but the heat and humidity were challenging. I crashed in Colombia, and injured myself and the bike in Chile. I even had run-ins with police at Central American borders. On my second day in southern USA, I found out I’d been invited to the Royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. I had to put my foot down and abandon my rest days to make it to the end to be back in Windsor in time. Using an app called WindyTV I was able to negotiate the tornados in Texas. At one point I rode 320 miles solidly in 11 hours to pick up a tail wind in Wyoming. Thankfully as we reached the northern states and Canada I was able to ride in the evenings, which we couldn’t do in South and Central America for security reasons. I broke the record for South America and the whole Pan American Highway, knocking 17 days off the previous best, to finish in 99 days, 12 hours and 56 minutes.

I rode 320 miles solidly in 11 hours to pick up a tail wind in Wyoming