THIRTEEN countries, 324 days and 12,814 miles: people in Oxford like cycling, but this man took it to the next level.

When geography teacher Daniel Moden set off on his sponsored bike ride from Vancouver, Canada, last year, he never could have known what adventures lay in store.

The 40-year-old from Sandford-on-Thames has cycled through the rainforests of Ecuador, past Nicaraguan volcanoes and over the some of the world's highest mountains in Peru.

He spent the night at fire stations, rice farms and in countless strangers' homes; he saw tropical toucans in their natural habitat and fell asleep to the sound of desert wolves.

He even managed to raise more than £3,700 for Cowley charity Oxfam along the way.

Now, a year after he set off, he is back in Oxford.

In the past few weeks he has even gone back to school at Icknield Community College, wowing students with tales of adventure.

And, although had the time of his life, by the time he reached the Peruvian capital Lima, he admits he was ready to call it a day.

He said: "It was quite an intense trip.

"It was wonderful, but by the end I was dragging myself through: the scenery was still awe-inspiring but after 11 month the routine of cycling every day gets slightly repetitive."

Mr Moden last spoke to the Oxford Mail in February when he was halfway through his journey.

By that point he had cycled 4,000 miles through Canada, the United States, Mexico, Belize and Honduras.

Since then he has ridden his beloved bike Bertha through Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, then, after a short plane trip, Columbia, Ecuador and Peru.

Asked for some of the highlights of his second leg he recalled: "In Ecuador I purposefully came down from the plateau to ride through the Amazonian rainforest.

"There was a lot of rainfall, it was hot and humid and occasionally I would have just vast expanses of rainforest continuing to the horizon – endless swathes of forest.

"I felt such a smallness: I could have been an ant climbing up a huge rainforest tree."

But he said the stand-out moment from his Central and South American cycle was not in the valleys but on the peaks.

"The mountain in Canada and America were impressive, but Peru just blew them out of the park," he said.

"The snow-capped peaks were just staggering: the roads looked like pieces of spaghetti thrown against the side of the mountain and going down them, swooping around those bends, was just so much fun: I got into a kind-of Zen state."

For accommodation, Mr Moden spent the majority of his trip relying on the kindness of strangers.

Mostly, he used the website warmshowers.org where cyclists offer their homes to fellow free-wheelers.

Mr Moden said he particularly treasured his stay with an organic rice farmer in northern Costa Rica.

Bizarrely, in Panama, he ended up staying at seven fire stations where local brigades turned out to be particularly hospitable.

Mr Moden admitted the trip had opened his eyes to just how welcoming and friendly most people actually are.

He said: "The absolute highlight of the trip, the thing that inspired me the most was the hospitality I received and the random acts of kindness.

"Sometimes I really just knocked on people's doors and would get invited in for dinner."

In a slight irony, even though Mr Moden is now back in Oxford, he can't actually get into his own home, which he rented out until August.

But he said, having spent so long on the road, he was actually enjoying a bit of coach-surfing on friends' floors and getting the chance to share his stories.

Mr Moden is still raising funds for Oxfam. See justgiving.com/fundraising/modentour