HIS toes were still numb from his 1,150-mile walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats, but the first thing Chris Francis did when he got home to Humshaugh was whip out his maps. Where to next, he mused.

And the answer? “Well, I’m off to the Lakes tomorrow as part of a training day for the walk in Norway a group of us are doing with Conrad Dickinson,” he said, “so that’s actually next.

“But I have got my eye on this walk through the highlands of Scotland, the Cape Wroth Trail, but that’s not one to do on your own and Kirsten (his wife) won’t fancy it, so maybe we’ll do Offa’s Dyke.

“Mind you, I did meet this guy who was walking from Cork to Istanbul ...”

Suffice to say, tired legs aside, Chris’s walking ambitions have been nothing but reinvigorated by his success at ticking off “the big one”. The fact he raised more than £4,000 in sponsorship for Tynedale Hospice at Home in the process was the added bonus.

He did admit he’d felt some apprehension as Day 1 dawned in Cornwall, though.

The route – habitually referred to as “Lejog” in walking circles – had long been in his mind and he knew, as he took voluntary redundancy/early retirement from his job as Northumberland County Council’s head of services for looked after children, that now was the time to do it.

“Then other things got in the way in that I’d taken one or two little jobs, such as cutting grass for the parish council,” he said.

“I’d convinced myself it was going to be a big challenge, too, because I wanted to do it all in one go.”

Conrad, however, was having none of it.

The only Briton to have achieved the Polar Grand Slam, the three unsupported journeys to the North Pole, the South Pole and across Greenland, he told Chris “you’ll regret it if you don’t go”.

And so come the morning of April 6, booted and weather-proofed, there Chris was, posing beneath the famous finger-post at Land’s End.

“It was cold, windy and damp and I did feel quite apprehensive,” he said. “But it was exciting at the same time. Setting off was a real buzz!”

Needless to say, he enjoyed many more highlights along the way, mostly thanks to the kindness of the people he met, and the quirkiness of some of them.

At Chepstow, in Wales, he spent the night with an old friend, one Steve Smith.

“I couldn’t understand it at first,” said Chris, “because he’d always loved his food and drink, and although I’d said I was hungry, he didn’t offer me anything.

“He was just anxious to get me to this pub where their choir practice was.

“Even when I went into the room, I didn’t twig, not until they sat me down next to the pianist-cum-conductor and started serenading me with songs such as Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots are Made for Walking, the Proclaimers’ 500 Miles and Lou Reed’s Perfect Day.

“Then they had a whip-round and raised around £100 for Tynedale Hospice. That was very moving.”

Another was rounding a corner in Kinbrace and being pulled up short by the most amazing gathering of red deer he’d ever seen.

There were dozens of them, perched in a long line atop a crag like Indians ready to ambush soldiers entering the canyon below.

“We looked at each other for a while and then eventually they just turned and headed off across the valley,” he said.

And then there was the guy who stood head and shoulders above all the other “characters” Chris met.

He was walking the Great Glen Way, dragging a wheeled-holdall behind him.

Chris said: “Some time before, he had started walking the Great Glen Way with his partner, but they gave up at an early stage as she found it too difficult.

“Then a couple of days previously they had had a row and he’d stormed out, grabbing the first bag that came to hand.

He’d decided to fulfil his dream of walking the trail, even though he had no tent, little money and was sleeping under the stars.

“When I met him, he said if he could complete 35 miles that day he would have done the 79-mile route in just over over three days. I was amazed the hold-all was holding up.

“By then his partner had reported him missing and the local bobby had called him to say he needed to report to a police officer in person so it could be verified he was OK, but he said he didn’t have time to do that and was considering continuing south down the West Highland Way, although he acknowledged he might need a new bag.”

When it came to his own sleeping arrangements, Chris opted mainly for bed and breakfast accommodation and a good night’s kip, with just a sprinkling of stays in hostels and his tent.

The tent certainly came into its own, though, in the remotest stretches in Scotland.

“It was good to have as a fallback,” he said.

“The thing I found was that the less expensive and rougher around the edges the B&B, the warmer the hospitality.

“I had one grumpy guy who obviously didn’t want people in his B&B, but apart from that, I met with nothing but help and support and interest in the cause I was raising money for.

“There’s an awful lot of good people out there!”

Despite having had a knee operation four years ago, a touch of arthritis in the aforementioned joint and an outbreak of the really rather painful plantar fasciitis, the odd Ibuprofen and paracetamol kept him rolling through the miles.

From Land’s End, he headed round the South West Coast Path to Barnstaple, across Exmoor to Cheddar, up to Bristol, across the bridge into Wales, up the border and back into England.

Then it was up the Pennine Way to Nenthead, where he took a right turn and walked home to Humshaugh for a couple of nights in his own bed.

Back on the trail, he went up to Byrness and then Jedburgh, knocked off stretches of St Cuthbert’s Way and the Southern Uplands Way, crossed the Pentland Hills, followed the Union Canal for 35 monotonous miles to Glasgow, and then peeled off, relieved, to pick up the West Highland Way, followed by the Great Glen Way.

The worst bit was the last, dreadful 120 stretch of primarily road walking from Inverness that took him, finally, to John O’Groats.

“I didn’t have a single blister until then, but walking on tarmac, it just trashes your feet!”