It just one foot in front of the other!

Meet Ken and his adventure-loving son, Gary!

Ken, our resident at Tanglewood Horncastle, is a retired policeman with a passion for pounding the pavement. But the real surprise? His son, Gary, didn’t catch the walking bug from Ken; it’s the other way around!

Their story begins in 1967, on a family camping trip to the Lake District. While they didn’t do much walking on that trip, it planted the seed of love for the picturesque Lake District scenery. Fast forward to when Gary was 19 and decided to work at a hotel in Borrowdale. There, he looked at a hill, Catbells, every day, and that’s when his obsession with walking ignited. By the end of the week, he wasn’t just climbing Catbells; he was sprinting up it!

When Ken and his wife, Ann (who is also a resident at our care home), visited Gary in the Lake District, they couldn’t resist the allure of these invigorating walks. The love for hiking quickly spread through the family like wildfire, including Ken’s daughter and even the grandkids!

As for Gary, his walking resume reads like an adventurer’s dream. He’s tackled Everest base camp in a mere 12 days, conquered the Tour de Mont Blanc in a swift 12 days, ran the Coast to Coast route in an astonishing six days, and mastered the Pennine Way in just ten days. In 2017, he completed the Viking Way, with Ken serving as the trusty support vehicle, shuttling him to and from. “I drove 600 miles that week,” Ken chuckled.

Ken and Ann’s walking adventures mostly follow in the footsteps of Wainwright’s Walks, primarily in the Lake District. But Ken adds a little twist to the tale, saying, “Only where there was a pub on the route!”

The moral of the story? It’s never too late to catch the adventure bug, and in this family, the love for walking is their shared bond. So here’s to Ken, Gary, and their multi-generational family of adventurers, leaving no hill unconquered and no trail unexplored!