A 7,000-mile stroll with the dogs
I spotted him this afternoon following us along the coast path as we stopped to admire the view from near Steamer Steps in Budleigh Salterton. "You look as though you're going a bit further than us," I said as he passed with his two black retrievers. And indeed he was. With that enormous rucksack he couldn't have been just taking the dogs for a walk. So in a way it was no surprise when he told us that he'd been following the coastline of Great Britain for almost a year, on foot. And then I thought of the savagely hard winter we'd been having and saw the days-old stubble on his face, and realised that there was a bit of a story here. Indeed there was and is. Ges Laker set out on his mammoth journey from Warsash in Hampshire on 31 January last year. His aims: to raise funds for a rather special charity, as well as to discover the coastal secrets of the UK. And I suppose also to keep fit, along with his two canine companions Phoebe and Sumo, the mother-and-son du...