A father and son cycled around 2,000 miles over 49 days in a two-month adventure to raise awareness and money for a park.

Dwight Wood and 11-year-old son Lewis completed the couch-surfing trip from July 5 to August 26.

The pair, from Aylmer Road, Leytonstone, travelled on average 47 miles a day, first taking a train to Exeter before cycling the coast right around Scotland.

As Chair of the Friends of Wanstead Parklands, Mr Wood was using the trip to raise awareness and funds for Wanstead Park, and he said around £1,000 had been raised so far for upkeep.

The 57-year-old said: “First of all it was to raise awareness of Wanstead Park and also show that people can be carbon neutral in their holiday habits.

“I also wanted to show that ordinary people can get out and do things like this, we are not special, we did no proper training for it, though we did complete a practice run in the Whitehaven to Newcastle in May.

“It was successful and I am pretty sure it is a record for an 11-year-old to travel so far by bicycle, I hear people say they completed a once in a lifetime 50-mile trip but we travelled that every day for 49 days.

“There was major preparation involved and we managed to find about 35 places willing to put us up for the night, couch-surfing is similar to hitchhiking in a way.”

Mr Wood joked that despite her best efforts to persuade them to ditch the plans, his wife Teffie, 46, let them undertake the trip.

He said: “The hardest thing was getting permission from Teffie, such an undertaking was not without dangers and she obviously wanted to get Lewis back in one piece.

“We had a few hairy moments and every day had its challenges, such as running out of food in the depths of Scottish countryside, and flooding in the West Country meaning we had to walk through completely flooded roads.

“Lewis’s chain came off a few times and his gears got tangled meaning we had to stop for repairs, but overall it was a time of bonding between father and son and he loved every day of it.”