It's unclear whether Mr. Tom Butterfield took the high road from Scotland on his recent Edinburgh-to-London fundraising quest for the Masterworks Foundation, but he certainly took the back roads.

During the course of the foundation chairman's eight-day odyssey from the Scottish capital to the English -- a 400-or-so-mile trip that was completed entirely by bicycle -- the 47-year-old former marathoner saw a version of the British Isles that most tourists never do: country lanes in which cars are a rarely seen sight, thatchers in the actual practice of their centuries-old techniques.

"It was wonderful,'' Mr. Butterfield, who returned to Bermuda last week, said of the journey, which began on May 24 on the steps of the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh and ended on May 31 at the National Gallery in London's Trafalgar Square.

"It was,'' the chairman continued, "one of life's great experiences -- kind of like the feeling that you get when you're crossing the ocean for the first time. There's a great sense of accomplishment, a real high.'' As personally fulfilling as Mr. Butterfield's bicycle journey was, however, it has also resulted in some very real benefits for the Bermudiana-acquiring charity, namely some $120,000 in pledges from donors who sponsored Mr.

Butterfield on a per-mile basis.

"I am just reeling with enthusiasm about the overall results of this trip,'' the foundation chairman, who in previous years has run five London Marathons to raise money for Masterworks, he told The Royal Gazette . And indeed Mr.

Butterfield should be, for in addition to paying off the $7,000 that will finally bring Winslow Homer's "Bermuda 1901,'' a painting by the famed American artist of the SS Trinidad cruising the North Shore, into Bermudian hands, the cash will also bring the charity a few steps closer to acquiring a locally inspired work by American Modernist Charles Demuth.

Most of the pledges for the bike trip, Mr. Butterfield said, came from sponsors here on the Island, although many donations were also acquired after the cyclist arrived in Britain.

In one particularly memorable incident, the Mastwerworks chairman recalled, two crossing guards in a little Scottish village that Mr. Butterfield had stopped in to ask directions surprised the cyclist by providing him with both a small pledge toward the bike tour and a message to take back to Bermuda.

"Let them know,'' he remembered the pair as saying, "that the Scottish are not mean!'' Of the English portion of his journey, Mr. Butterfield fondly recalled his encounter with a Cambridgeshire thatcher, whose craft inspired comparisons to Bermuda's own stone trade.

And he pointed out, too, that the motorists in England were unexpectedly warm.

"I thought that maybe the English wouldn't have been as courteous toward a cyclist as some other Europeans might be,'' he said. "But they were. I felt safer riding in England than I do in Bermuda.'' As with most long journeys, however, this one wasn't without its mishaps. At one point, Mr. Butterfield said, he was forced to seek out medical help when his knee unexpectedly gave. And, the Masterworks chairman recalled, he was also constantly facing a strong headwind that made his southerly progress through England a much more daunting exercise than if he had cycled in the other direction.

"What I didn't realise when I first set out was that the prevailing winds in England are from south to north,'' Mr. Butterfield said. "If I would have to do it over again, I would probably do it from London to Edinburgh.'' It was, incidentally, somewhere between London and Edinburgh the fundraising bid nearly suffered its greatest setback -- the theft of Mr. Butterfield's original bike.

"We had to start all over again,'' the chairman said of the robbery. "It (the bike) was never recovered, but we did manage to outfit another.'' In spite of the journey's many irritants, though, Mr. Butterfield said that the benefits of the trip for Masterworks and indeed for all of Bermuda have far outweighed any of the hardships that he suffered. During the excursion, Mr. Butterfield presented two copies of the recently published "Masterworks Bermudiana Collection'' to each of the directors of the two national galleries. Written by Royal Gazette arts critic Ms Patricia Calnan, the book serves as a detailed catalogue of the eight-year-old collection, which includes works by Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, Albert Gleizes and Jack Bush. When he was subsequently asked what Masterworks, which is becoming as well-known for its fundraising initiatives as it is for its collection, could possibly do as a follow-up to the bike tour, Mr. Butterfield was rather hard-pressed to provide an answer.

WHEELER DEALER -- Mr. Tom Butterfield of the Masterworks Foundation is back from his bicycling fundraiser.