William ReddawayWilliam Reddaway of the Trail's Trust hopes to raise £250,000 for charity through a 2,500 sponsored ride around England. He plans to ride to the four corners of the country via towns and cities built and lived in for centuries by people with horses, visiting 30 cathedrals on the way.

The ride will start from Farncombe Esate, Broadway, in Spring 2013 and take six months. The two charities he has chosen are the Family Hoilday Association and Wormwood Scrubs Pony Centre - Riding for the Disabled.

Talking about his proposed ride, Will said I enjoy planning; I enjoy logistics and I enjoy maps so there is quite a bit on these topics. As the months go by to the start there will be more. If those subjects interest you please do dig around the website.

The basic route is set by the Four Corners and the Thirty Cathedrals. I will start and finish at the Farncombe Estate, on the side of the Cotswolds near the village of Broadway, where I worked from 1983 to 2011, and go: Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester, Coventry, Lichfield, Chester, Sheffield, Bowness-on-Solway (1st Corner), Carlisle, Berwick-upon-Tweed (2nd Corner), Durham, Ripon, York, Lincoln, Southwell, Peterborough, Ely, Norwich, Bury St Edmunds, St Albans, Wormwood Scrubs Pony Centre, St Pauls, Southwark, Rochester, Canterbury, North Foreland (3rd Corner), Chichester, Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Truro, Lands End (4th Corner), Wells, Bristol, Oxford, Gloucester, and as a bonus for love of a wonderful place, Tewkesbury. Other stops will be added and information given in the relevant section. Already planned are the British Horse Society offices, south of Coventry, Wormwood Scrubs Pony Centre and the Animals in War Memorial in London and a section of the north Norfolk coast. Estimated distances between the cathedrals are given on the page for each section. Detailed planning involves deciding every mile on bridleway or road and then finding stabling and accommodation at the right daily distances. The route will be put onto each section as it is identified and I will update the distances. The safe route for a horse is nothing like the route for a car! It is almost always much more twisty and less direct as off-road routes are identified and busy roads avoided as much as possible. To put travel on horseback into perspective: It will take me two to three days to travel what we all expect to do in an hour with a car on a fast road. Some sections of the route are fairly obvious, most of it will be planned in late 2011 and 2012. As sections are planned I will add information to the website. You can Sponsor a Section between two cathedrals or sponsor and name a ten mile section. Please get in touch if you would like to do this.

To find out more about Will's ride, sponsor him, and follow his progress click here  >

Will's Ride  | Sponsor Will now

'Creating Multi-user Public Rights of Way - A Guide for Local Groups' is now available priced at £15.00 plus £2.50 post and packing.  To secure your copy please send a cheque for £17.50 payable to The Trails Trust to:

TTT Administration Officer, Townsend Cottage, Priddy, Wells, Somerset BA5 3BP.  For more information regarding book ordering and payment, please email us.

For more information please see the Press Release and our Guide Document.

The TTT Guide


TTT Trustee and Guide author
Rachel Thomspon