A meeting of 60 ramblers from Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire took place last week at The Prince of Wales pub in Ross-on-Wye. It ws an opportunity to celebrate the life of Neville Littleford, 84, who died of a heart attack, when leading a walk in the Sollers Hope area in December.

He was a vital and active person with a huge charismatic personality who was extremely generous with his time, concern and possessions. He leaves a widow Thelma who very kindly gave his maps, walking books and CDs to those at the gathering.

An hour of tributes covered tales of his walking, his helpfulness, his ballroom dancing expertise and the walking holidays he organised. The speakers were Satish Barot, Heather Davies, Lyndon Duke, Ian Foster, Sally Northcott, Allan Ricketts, Margaret Rodgers, Guy Vowles and Danny Webb. Joe Kennedy sent his apologies but, prior to the evening, emailed information about Neville’s love of football and horse racing.

Neville was a founder member of the Ross Ramblers Group in 2001 but he only started serious walking when he retired from running a pet shop with Thelma in his native Birmingham in 1994, and moved to Ross. In the next twelve years he completed seven British National Trails including, in May and June of 1998, the notorious, longest and most difficult, the South West Coast Path. This follows 630 miles from Minehead to Poole with climbs and descents equivalent to scaling Everest four times. In addition he completed 14 Recreational Paths over 50 miles in length, including the most popular long distance walk in Britain, Wainwright’s Coast to Coast and Four Challenge walks. His favourite of these was the Abergavenny Three Peaks which he walked six times in nine years. Showing amazing consistency, with one exception his record cards indicate this walk always took him seven hours 15 minutes.

On average he led a walk for the Ross Ramblers every month. He used to work out the walk and research the history and places of interest. From his extensive collection of maps he used to photocopy the area and mark the route on the copy. In his archives he had 130 of these walks and he had already planned walks for the next three months.

As the local Ramblers footpath officer for many years his knowledge of the paths in the 32 parishes of South Herefordshire was unrivalled. Neville’s great concern was to maintain them for public use and he was a very active Ross Ramblers committee member. In 2002 he was a consultant in many parts of Herefordshire for the Herefordshire Trail (154 miles) and acted in the same capacity for the Ross Round Walk.

As a mark of respect a Neville Cyril Littleford Memorial Fund has been set up to be administered by Ross Ramblers Committee to promote the aims of the Ramblers Association.At present this stands at £950, any further donations will be very welcome and cheques, made payable to Ramblers Association (HW2), should be sent to Hon Treasurer, 4, Fisherman’s Reach, Wilton, Ross-on-Wye, HR9 6BE.