Mark Beaumont is famous for setting the world solo cyling record and talks to Viv Hardwick about his stage tour and a forthcoming TV series.

THE best-selling cycling book at the moment isn’t by Sir Chris “on yer bike”

Hoy or Bradley Wiggins, it’s The Man Who Cycled the World by TV documentary maker Mark Beaumont, who makes his public speaking debut at Durham’s Gala Theatre next Tuesday.

The 27-year-old cyclist certainly has a lot to wheel out.

He broke the world solo record in 2008 with a time of 194 days and 17 hours and, 18 months later in February, finished a gruelling 13,000 ride across the Americas.

Just for fun he added in climbing the two highest peaks, Mt McKinley in Alaska and Aconcagua in Argentina… with five days climbing experience.

All of this is about to be featured in his mostly self-filmed documentary, The Man Who Cycled the Americas, on BBC1 at the end of this month.

“I first started off doing endurance cycling when I was 11, so I’ve been doing if for years and years, but the last four years I’ve been doing it on a professional basis because I’ve always dreamed of doing these major cycle challenges,” says Edinburgh-based Beaumont.

His world cycle TV adventure started off with the promise of a 20-minute slot on BBC Scotland but developed into a nationwide TV series as he battled across four continents, through 20 countries at 100 miles per day for over six months.

“To some cyclists, 100 miles a day doesn’t sound like much but I’m pedalling a custom-made Koga Miyata bike with special internal gearing and a dynamo running the lights, so it weighs 50kg which makes it a long way,”

adds the man who never feels lonely despite going days without seeing other people.

He has his camera as a constant companion, with the footage being regularly sent back to the UK, plus a solarpowered mobile phone, GPS and lap-top which has allowed tens of thousands of fans to follow his progress. “One of my worst moments was being mugged for my camera in Louisianna because it meant I lost a week of film footage,” says Beaumont who ended up on the bonnet of a car earlier the same day in his biggest brush with death… if you don’t count two serious attacks of food poisoning.

“It could have been a lot worse. I came away fairly unscathed after a mugging and being run over. The Americas expedition could have potentially been more dangerous because I was in the mountains and climbed to over 6,000 metres twice and these really are environments where you are away from the infrastructure of modern life.

“Even in the desert there will be other road users, but in the mountains you know there’s a period of time when you’re beyond rescue and that’s a risk you have to take,” he explains.

Even so, Beaumont doesn’t see himself as a great daredevil and sees climbers and polar explorers taking far more risks.

“My dream is to continue doing great endurance expeditions. They are psychological battles, but what I’m doing is capturing the world I’m passing through which is what I want to do,” says the long distance cyclist who actually fears high winds rather than hill climbs.

“At least you get to cruise down the other side of a hill, there’s no prize for battling into a head wind all day,” says the man who has survived monsoon rains, a grizzly bear in Canada and being locked up by the police in Pakistan.

The only question he skirts around is how he’s managed to have any kind of lovelife during all these epic adventures on wheels.

On the endurance side, Beaumont says: “Most people could do it in the physical sense, but you’ve got to enjoy it and you’ve got to get to know yourself pretty well. Most of us have a busy and distracted lifestyle, but on expeditions it’s a tough life and terribly simple.

You’ve got to live with yourself and get through it. That kind of singular obsession is not common in everyday life. Once you’ve mastered it you can enjoy these journeys,” Beaumont says.

“I do know that this isn’t the way you get your break into television. Many other people are trying to do similar things.

It’s an incredibly hard industry to get your start in and I was incredibly lucky through being in the right place at the right time. For the Americas, it was a BBC project from the start and a lot easier for me to focus on without having to keep worrying about sponsors. Now, it’s just up to me to work on what the new opportunities will be,” says the man who has never had a presenting lesson in his life.

Norman Tebbit would be so proud.

■ The Man Who Cycled the World tour: March 16, Durham Gala Theatre, Box Office: 0191- 332-4041; April 27, Middlesbrough Theatre, 01642- 815181 and May 4, Customs House, South Shields, 0191-454- 1234.

■ The Man Who Cycled the Americas, BBC1, March 23, 30 and April 6, 10.35pm