A KEEN cyclist is about to turn his dreams into reality by completing a 5,500-mile ride across the USA.

Eddie Thomas, of Sherrards Green Road, Malvern, said he had imagined travelling across America on a Harley Davidson or in an open-top Cadillac.

But a charity cycle ride from St Petersburg to Moscow, which he did for Scope in 1998, convinced him that cycling was the only way to go.

"In a car you are cocooned but on a bike you can feel and smell the countryside. You're part of the environment," he said.

The 38-year-old Yorkshire man came to Malvern in 1998 to work for Worcestershire Lifestyles on a six-month contract. He liked the place so much that he stayed.

Mr Thomas finishes work at Waitrose this week and flies out from Gatwick on May 28. He plans to return to the town after his five-month ride to give talks to school children about his adventure and promote the benefits of cycling as a healthy and environmentally-friendly form of transport.

His indirect journey across the country will begin in Oregon on the west coast, where he plans to dip his wheels in the Pacific Ocean before heading north-east over the Rockies into Montana and through the Yellowstone National Park.

After stopping off to talk about his first month's experiences to children at the West Yellowstone Library, he will ride through the Grand Teton National Park into Colorado, through Kansas and the mid-west and over the Appalachian Mountains into Virginia.

He will then head north up the east coast through the New England states, calling at New York on his way to Maine, where he will take the ferry to Nova Scotia and dipping his wheels in the waters of the Atlantic.

"It's taken a year of planning. I've sold all my possessions and I'll pack camping equipment on my bike and be completely self-sufficient," he said.

"It's incredibly liberating to know that everything you have to survive is on the bike."