It's done. 441 miles, the length of Scotland, finished on Sunday 30th August on Glasgow Green — the city I was born in and left when I was nine.

I walk. For days at a time. Sometimes with company and sometimes alone. I first did it when a friend and I raised money for cancer research on the West Highland Way. My mum has lost her entire immediate family to cancer and is the only one of them to see a 60th birthday. There's been other close relatives and friends too. But this isn't about them, it's about the people it will still come for. My family and so many others are at high risk.

Her mother died before I was born. Her father when I was one. By twenty-one she had buried both her parents. Then her older sister Carol. Then her younger brother Jim. She was the only one left.

So I kept walking. Six trails stitched into one line from the Solway Firth to John O'Groats: the Annandale Way, my own route over the Clydesdale watershed from Moffat to Lanark, the Clyde and Kelvin Walkways, the West Highland Way, the Great Glen Way and the John o' Groats Trail.

It was not all fine weather. I walked the Moffat to Lanark stretch in sub-zero temperatures the day after the worst storm Scotland had seen in a hundred years, climbing over fallen trees. I reached John o' Groats in driving rain off the North Sea.

I walk in my mother's family Buchanan tartan, and a badge goes on the kilt for every Great Walk finished. I'm not hard to spot coming down the road in a bright kilt with long white hair.

The last four days were St Ann's to Moffat, Milngavie to Glasgow Green, the Falls of Clyde to Strathclyde Loch, and then eighteen miles from Strathclyde Loch back into Glasgow. Reaching the arch on Glasgow Green completed the Clyde Walkway as well as the length of Scotland. My family were waiting in the rain with a banner.

Across all the walks the total is nowabout £5,500 for Cancer Research UK. Every donation goes straight to them.

Roll of honour — everyone who walked with me and helped raise the funds:

- Annandale Way — my dad (Tommy), Mark Eddie

- Moffat to New Lanark — Mark Eddie (and thanks to my dad for emergency support after the biggest storm in 100 years)

- Clyde Walkway — Paul Gavin, Mark Eddie, Martin Sweeney, Martyn McGlynn, James McGhee, with my uncle Eamonn Murphy walking the weekend

- Tall Ships to Milngavie - Me and Mark Eddie

- West Highland Way — Brian Rafferty, Michael Strain

- Great Glen Way — my dad (Tommy), Mark Eddie

- John o' Groats Trail — Inverness to Brora with Mark Eddie; Brora to Whaligoe Steps with my dad and Mark; Whaligoe Steps to John o' Groats on my own

Not part of the length of Scotland, but honourable mentions all the same:

- Rob Roy Way — my son Eoin, Peter Sugden, Neil Levitt

- Fife Coastal Path — that one alone

Thank you to everyone who walked a stretch, put me up, fed me, cheered, or gave. You are all belters!