SOME might say that only the foolhardy would walk from Oxford to Abingdon when there is a bus service that can prevent both leather wear and limb fatigue.

To rise at daybreak and extend the mileage to 26 miles, calling at places well off the direct route, could elicit accusations of downright barminess.

That is unless they are doing it for a good cause like the children and young people’s respite centre, Helen and Douglas House. Last Saturday, with the temperature sky high, about 100 people in teams of two, three, four or five, all with imaginative names, such as Last Minute Rush, Stridus Maximum, Tim’s Muppets and Goths in Wellies, spend upwards of eight hours doing just that.

Let’s make it clear: my role was that of custodian of two check points – the first barely six miles into the journey, the second three miles from the finishing line.

I moved between the two by car. My philosophy is that third-class riding, even in any of those vehicles scorned by Andrew Smith in our weekly Your Wheels supplement, is miles better than first-class walking.

It had been uplifting to see bright-faced walkers as they reached the earlier checkpoint in pretty Marsh Baldon and to encourage them on their way with re-filled water bottles, jelly babies and flapjacks.

But how their expressions had changed several hours later when we met again near Culham.

Some took on water but very few accepted another ‘damned flapjack’. All they wanted was to know how many miles still lay ahead.

Organiser Fiona Evans had laid on tasty food once they had finished and there was a pleasant riverboat return journey to Oxford. But was it worth it?

Once told that if all sponsorship promises were honoured, about £20,000 would be raised, pain paled and fatigue faded in the frames of the gallant 100.

But I can’t guarantee the euphoria survived long into the following morning.

THERE was also an air of exhaustion around the two undergraduates – one male, one female – as they licked well-earned ice creams in High Street opposite the Examinations Schools they had recently left.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“Rotten,” said the carnation-wearing male. “Why I decided on Russian I’ll never know. I must be mad.”

His companion echoed this sentiment. Cheerful words were useless; let’s hope their pessimism is unfounded. However, I recall similar foreboding after my third stab at a maths O-level paper. It proved all too prophetic.

IT was like a Broadway ticker-tape parade, only it was the M40, and the paper showered from an over-loaded eight-wheeled container lorry. For three miles, trapped in the middle lane between solid traffic, I imagined myself as some celebrity.

But this came to an end when silent paper was replaced by hammering gravel.

The windscreen survived, but the bodywork? Oh dear!