There's no picture to go with this, nor much of a story.

But maybe you don't need a story when you ride up behind a man who has already ridden 870,000 miles.

His name is Chris Davies, he comes from near Portsmouth in England, and his outline was unmistakable as we rode up behind him one afternoon. Not many people ride with their shoulders hunched, their heads held low and pointing straight ahead. Nor do they always wear the same Portsmouth CTC jersey.

Chris has his name in the Guinness Book of Records. I first met him when I worked for Cycling in the 1970s. He used to report on races along the south coast of England. He had a pretty impressive distance total behind him even then. This time, I'm sure he said he was up to 870,000 miles.

"Aren't you proud to be British?" is what he asked me. He wanted to know why I was wearing "a flashy French jersey" instead of something more befitting the land of my birth.

"I live here now, though, Chris," I said.

"Oh," he answered, as though that was interesting but no excuse.

Chris has come to the Sem Fed with a CTC trip. He is staying with a lot of other CTC members at a hotel in town.

"They all came on the bus, though," he said with an air of disapproval even greater than he'd shown my "flashy French jersey". "I rode down here. What was I going to do, cooped up in a bus all that time when I could have been riding?"

Up the road I passed a woman riding briskly. I asked if she'd passed an old chap with silver hair a little way back. She said she had. I couldn't resist telling her that he had already ridden a bicycle further than anyone else on earth and that nothing looked like halting him for a bit yet.

I translated the distance into kilometres. I could get it only roughly as I rode and I told her 1,200,000. A few thousand either way wouldn't matter.

"Mon dieu!" she gasped. And then "Chapeau au monsieur!" ("Congratulations to the gentleman.)

Congratulations indeed.