WHEN 74-year-old Jack Allen announced he wanted to spend the summer cycling 4,500 miles east to west across America, his daughter Kendal wasn't so keen that he should go.

"Couldn't you do something a little closer to home?" she wondered protectively. And so, in the spirit of compromise he did. He rode 4,500 miles round the coast of Britain instead.

Setting off from Liverpool (he rode to Merseyside from his Wolstanton home), he pedalled clockwise round the country arriving in Birkenhead 110 days later. His daughter wondered if he might want to pop in to Keele, where she works, for a cup of tea on the way home. Well, I suppose it is pretty much all in a day's work for a chap who's ridden the entire Pacific coastline of North America from Canada to Mexico, not to mention the 1,000-mile Alaska Highway.

This weekend, he's having a day off – he's just trekking 26 miles across six Peak District dales in eight hours or so.

Jack says that, on completing his marathon bike ride, he felt nothing but "elation". Not the elation that comes from completing a hard task – more the elation that comes from yet another immensely life-affirming experience with the machine that has shaped his life.

Back in the 50s and 60s, Jack raced bicycles with clubs including Burslem Olympic Wheelers. Indeed, he still holds the record for the climb up Elkstone Hill to the Mermaid pub in the Moorlands. Although he does, with a laugh, admit that the climb is no longer competitively challenged.

After a period out of the saddle, the ex-plumber rediscovered the sport later in life. In retirement it has given him a social network that Facebookers can only dream about. Of the 110 nights of his round-Britain sojourn, Jack spent 86 in his tent ("Kendal says I always camp next to the toilet block so it's en suite!"), and of the other 24, 20 were spent bedding down at pals' places. "It's always worth writing down people's numbers," he laughs. "You never know when they're going to come in handy!"

Jack, as you might have gathered, is a somewhat relaxed character.

"I've got my bike and my little tent," he says. "It doesn't matter where I am – I've got a bed for the night."

Jack's plan was to get the Scotland leg of the trip out the way early on to avoid the midge season (he wasn't successful). "The west coast of Scotland was magnificent," he says. But isn't it tricky to follow the coast of Britain in and out of its endless inlets. "People ask that," he muses, "but it's not that hard. All you have to do is make sure the sea is on your left hand side." Hmm, when you put it like that.

The intense beauty of Scotland can be compared to rather less visually pleasing areas "like the east coast of England – Newcastle, Middlesbrough, places like that". But such spots still had their reward. "The kindness of people, even in these places where they didn't have jobs was brilliant."

Devon and Cornwall, says Jack, were the hardest. "The hills were very hard. Also it was the height of the holiday season so there was a lot of traffic around. But again, people were great to me."

In Britain, most long-distance cyclists tend to concentrate on the Land's End to John O'Groats route. But Jack did encounter one chap doing his trip – the other way. Mike Carter was recording his own journey for The Observer. "I felt so in awe of this man," he wrote of Jack after they'd ridden out to Duncansby Head, the mainland's true most northerly point, "of his infectious enthusiasm for all life had to offer."

It's an apt description. Half an hour with Jack is an inspirational experience.

For her part, Kendal kept a highly entertaining blog of her dad's journey. He'd post her a disposable camera of his adventures and on the internet it went.

When the escapade was over, there was widespread dismay among its followers as to what they were going to read now.

One feels, however, where Jack's concerned, there will be many more tales of life, and bacon butties, on the road to tell.