WALK COMPLETED ON 14TH JUNE 2018. DONATIONS STILL WELCOME.

For many years a highly qualified optician by the name of Ian Squire had led a team of eye specialists to Africa to provide free optical help and glasses for needy people there - effectively restoring sight to the blind and near blind in many cases. Last Autumn he and his team were kidnapped and, although in the end most of them escaped safely, Ian himself was killed.

Apart from his missionary and charitable activities, he was a devoted family man and a highly respected optician serving the population of and around his home town of Shepperton, very near to my own home town of Sunbury and we had many mutual acquaintances.

I wish to do something to perpetuate his memory and in the process help to continue the work that he started.

Since Ian was largely motivated in his work by his religion and I myself am a fairly enthusiastic cross-country walker, I felt that my walking the traditional "Pilgrims' Way" from Winchester to Canterbury and asking for donations in sponsorship of this, would be an appropriate response. I will be doing this in the course of this coming Summer and am calling on all who think this worthwhile to donate accordingly.

I am of fairly advanced years and the path is 120 miles long, so I will not be doing it in one continuous hit, but in a series of separate "legs", each of about three days walking with a few days rest in between them. I will be starting out in the last week of April and hopefully finishing by early June.

Please donate generously at:

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/richard-stephenson-pilgrimsway

Thank You.