DILWYN character Tony Hobbs is famous for his escapades on foot and bicycle - all for good causes - in which he gained a certain local notoriety for being accident-prone.

He fell off his bike and broke his arm in two places during a charity cycle ride across India. He broke the funny bone in his other arm when he slipped on a wet log on a charity run along Herefordshire's Mortimer Trail.

He had to pull out of his first attempt to walk the Offa's Dyke Long Distance Path from end to end for the Lupus charity. He developed a painful foot ailment, fasciitus, which put him out of action for a month.

But Tony, a 64-year-old real ale, pubs and people enthusiast, comes from the 'never say die' school. He did finally walk the Dyke trail - all 180 hilly miles of it from Chepstow to Prestatyn.

He succeeded after that first failed attempt by returning the following year with a lighter backpack, discarding his tent in favour of accommodation at guest houses along the route.

Now he has published an amusing account of the journey he made with his brother-in-law Richard James and Richard's dog Homer.

The book gives the Dyke trail the same kind of treatment as Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in A Boat gave to the River Thames.

These men walked and suffered, in part, but they also had a marvellous rural pub crawl. Many pints of fine ale were savoured and subsequently described in print along with the characters the yarns along the route.

What happened when a rambler answered a mobile phone in the pocket of a coat he found hanging in a tree.is an aside to the main 'plot' worthy of Jerome.

Tony Hobbs is the author of One Pairs of Boots (about a trek from Land's End to John O'Groats in 1997) and The Pubs of Ludlow, both published by Herefordshire's Logaston Press.

He has published his new book himself and printing has been expertly handled by Leominster Community Resource Centre.

l A Stroll Along Offa's Dyke, by Tony Hobbs, is available at £4.50 from local bookshops.

Pete Blench