The latest in a series of long distance walks undertaken by the president of Isabel Hospice has raised £7,500 for the charity.
Barbara Doherty, who lives in Much Hadham, completed the 73-mile Ribble Way linking the Lancashire coast and Yorkshire Dales National Park with her sister Jill McArthur.
The siblings – both retired nurses – started at the mouth of the River Ribble at Longton, near Preston, and followed it to its source near Ribblehead.
Setting off in a deluge of rain on their first day, the path followed the Ribble through the flat rural landscape and into Yorkshire with its rapids and falls set against the backdrop of Pendle Hill and finally Pen-y-Ghent.
Barbara, 78, and Jill, 74, who lives in Scotland have embarked on a long distance walk together almost every year for 24 years, raising about £100,000 for the Hospice.
Over the years they have covered about 2,500 miles, usually averaging 12 miles a day. Their longest is the 192-mile Coast to Coast walk from the Irish Sea at St Bees in Cumbria to the North Sea at Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire.
They were due to walk the Ribble Way in 2020 but had to postpone because of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was only the second year since their first outing, the West Highland Way in 1997, that they have not tackled a trek.
Barbara said: “My thanks to everyone for their generosity in sponsoring me and helping to raise the much-needed funds for Isabel Hospice so that we can continue to give that vital care to patients and their families.”
