82-year-old Briton Completes 100 Modes of Transport Challenge

An 82-year-old Briton was celebrating Friday after completing his bid to travel on 100 different types of transport within a year.

Edwin Shackleton, a retired aircraft engineer from Bristol started off his odyssey with a ride in his car on New Year's Day.

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Seven months on, the bowel cancer survivor travelled by his 100th mode of transport by taking a ride in a hot air balloon.

On his way to the 100 mark, Shackleton travelled in a sledge, a fire engine, a rubbish truck, a rickshaw, a police car, a chairlift, a quad bike and a microlight plane.

Now the widowed pensioner has decided to carry on and try to take 240 different modes of transport, which he hopes will score him a Guinness World Record.

Indeed, after disembarking from the hot air balloon, Shackleton was off for a ride in a catamaran.

"Everything I've been on has been a fascinating experience," he told the Western Daily Press newspaper in southwest England.

"Even the sand yacht that was so close to the ground that I thought I was going to scrape my bottom, and the catamaran on which quite a lot of people were sick and the smell was horrible."

Shackleton has already made a Guinness World Record, for flying the biggest variety of aircraft as a passenger.

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On his bid for another record, he is scheduled to ride in a three-wheel car, a brewer's dray and a privately-owned Russian T-55 tank.

Shackleton said he also wanted to travel on a Cessna 208 Caravan bush plane used in Scotland, plus a transporter bridge and a steam-propelled bus in northeast England.

He said: "It's surprising the wide variety of transport there is when you start to look into it."

Source-AFP
SRM