The 77-year-old grandfather walking the 3°W line of longitude through Scotland to raise money for foodbanks

Walking from the Dorset coast in the south of England to the northern coast of Westray in the Orkney Islands is hard enough even without trying to do so in as straight a line as possible. As far as retired engineer Nigel Griffiths knows, no-one ever has.

Nigel Griffiths is walking the 3°W line of longitude through England, Wales and Scotland to raise money for foodbanks. | Contributed

But on Tuesday as he sets out from Traquair in the Scottish Borders bound for Garvald in East Lothian, the 77-year-old grandfather is more than halfway on his journey along the 3°W line of longitude - the one that runs through the most of Britain. In the process, he has already raised £9,000 for food banks in places he is passing through.

He is also doing the walk in memory of a much-loved cousin who died from cancer.

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“He joined us for supper every week and noted that our parish [Burton, in Cheshire] was on the 3°W meridian,” Mr Grittiths said.

“He wondered what else was, so I got out my old school atlas that had lines of latitude and longitude on it and read out the names of round about a dozen-and-a-half places as one went northwards through Britain. As he was leaving us that evening, he rattled them all off – he had that kind of mind.”

One of those places – Prestonpans - is the end point of the section of the walk he will be starting at ten o’clock on Tuesday morning at Traquair war memorial, which itself was the end point of the last section he walked from Longtown.

A meticulous planner

As you might expect from a retired engineer, he has planned the route thoroughly, taking it in four or five-day stretches with about twice that time in between, when he returns to his home near Chester.

On an average walking day, he usually covers no more than 12 miles - keeping it deliberately short, he says, to encourage people to join him.

Nigel Griffiths is walking the 3°W line of longitude through England, Wales and Scotland to raise money for foodbanks. | Contributed

The four-day walk he is starting on Tuesday to Prestonpans, with overnight stops at Garvald, Crichton and Wallyford, is one of the shortest, at just 37 miles. But he will start again next month, walking across Fife and into Angus at Cortachy before returning again to England.

“I have rather a lot of grandchildren,” he said. “So my wife and I will be seeing them over the summer holidays. But I’ll start again in September and walk up across the Cairngorms to the Moray coast.”

The walk’s final stages

Once there, and unable to follow the 3°W meridian north across the Moray Firth, he will walk to Inverness, which he intends to reach on October 9. By then the nights will be drawing in, so he will put off the final stages - Inverness to John O’Groats and then the Orkney Islands - until spring.

For all his assiduous planning - the route is never further than a mile from the 3°W meridian, unless marshes and an uncrossable river gets in the way - it’s not all plain walking.

Nigel Griffiths is walking the 3°W line of longitude through England, Wales and Scotland to raise money for foodbanks. | Contributed

Railway paths turn out to be overgrown, rights of way blocked off by barbed wire - an increasing problem, he notes, after the pandemic - and what looked on the map like a delightful countryside stroll turns out to be a long trudge through a forest.

That was what he had been expecting to find as he walked north from the Yarrow Valley, only to see the views open up as he headed down the valley towards Traquair. That was where, by complete chance, I met him. He told me his story and I followed him down the hill. He had to go south for his granddaughter’s 21st birthday, but on Tuesday morning at ten o’clock, he’ll be heading north again.

For further details of the walk or for charity donations, Mr Griffiths can be contacted on [email protected]. His walk blog is on 3deg.west on Instagram and the progress map is on 3degw.travelmap.net