BBC's Jim Fish reports on Nick Bourne's run into the record books

The marathon to end all marathons began in South Africa and covered more than 10,000 km before ending at the Pyramids in Cairo.

Nick Bourne: "I wanted more of a challenge in my life"

Nick Bourne has braved deserts, floods, war zones and wild animals to complete this self-imposed endurance test. And his reward on arrival? A bottle of Coca-Cola and a bouquet of flowers - a modest recognition of a nearly superhuman feat.

Nicholas Bourne (in blue): Severe mental test as well as a physical one

A former international model, the six-foot-four runner is hoping to raise around $1.5m through his Run For Africa, sponsored by the charities Born Free and Save the Children.

"I wanted something else in my life," he said. "I also wanted to highlight some of the things that I felt were necessary to highlight, about conservation and about education for children."

So far he is only about three-quarters of the way towards his money target and he and his mother have had to dig into their own pockets to finance the trek.

Nick Bourne's mother helped to fund his marathon

A back-up team, headed by his sister, Emma, monitored his progress as he endured the heat of the Kalahari Desert, cut his own path through the grasslands of Sudan and taken his chances with well-armed militias in Eastern Africa.

But crew members say their biggest headache was not the dangers of the wild but the politics of crossing borders.

The original plan was to run south, beginning in Egypt, but last year Egyptian soldiers stopped his progress at the Sudanese border. Undeterred, Bourne caught a plane to South Africa and completed the route in reverse.

Perhaps the official reception at the pyramids was the was the Egyptian authorities way of saying "sorry".