Along the way it will also fly by zip wire from the Tyne Bridge, cross Loch Ness and visit landmarks including the Giant's Causeway and Stonehenge.

BBC: Olympic torch relay to visit EastEnders' Walford

Mr Heatherwick's future projects include the world's first all-glass bridge, and a public square in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which will take the dramatic and humorous appearance of a gigantic, electric-blue carpet landing, as it were, from outer space.

ECONOMIST: Building design

Newcastle's arching Tyne Bridge, Liverpool's modernist Philharmonic Hall and the classical rotunda of Manchester's central library, which held 300 readers in what was then the country's biggest reading room outside the British Library in London, were all products of the civic and, in some cases, philanthropic determination of local leaders.

ECONOMIST: Depression architecture