Heinz Stücke
Heinz Stücke (born c. 1940) is a record-breaking German traveller and long-distance cyclist.
Biography
In 1962, the 22-year-old Stücke quit his work as a tool- and die-maker and rode out of his home town, Hövelhof, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, on a three-speed bicycle, with a plan to see the world. He has never since returned to Hövelhof, stating that his extraordinary desire to travel has been partly motivated by his not wanting to return home to his factory work and "the very small-minded people" of his village.
In the early 1980s, after two decades on the road, Stücke decided to attempt to visit every country in the world. By 2006 he had cycled more than 539,000 kilometres (335,000 miles) since 1962, and had visited 192 countries.
In May 2006, he was briefly in the national news in the United Kingdom for having his bicycle stolen from outside his tent during a stay in the city of Portsmouth. His bicycle, the original machine he rode out of Hövelhof on in 1962, was recovered 36 hours later in a local park.[1]
Travels
Stücke has travelled 539 000 kilometes (334,919 miles) on his bicycle since 1962 (see above for more exact numbers). He was registered as the most travelled man in history in the Guinness Book of Records between 1995 and 1999. [2]
He has also amassed a collection of more than 100,000 photographs taken by himself during his travels, and uses licensing revenue from these photos and sales of his travel memoirs and picture books to support his expeditions.
During his wide-ranging travels he has encountered a number of hazards:
- Being hit by a truck in Chile's Atacama Desert.
- Chased by an angry Haitian mob.
- Beaten unconscious by Egyptian soldiers.
- Detained by Cameroon's military for “slandering the state.”
- Attacked by bees while bathing in a river in Mozambique in 1995.
- A serious bout of dysentery in Indonesia in 1974.
- Shot in the foot by Zimbabwean rebels in 1980.
In 2002, Heinz rode across Canada with a partner, on a Pino Tandem recumbent bicycle, built and sponsored by Hase Spezialräder.