She hopes her new route - called The Roman Way and developed into a definitive guidebook after a long process of trial and error - will be equally successful in opening people's eyes to the history hidden in everyday sights. Charity walkers have included a six-year-old black Labrador, Branson - named after Sir Richard - and his deaf owner, Antony Sabin, who raised GBP10,000 for the charity Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. The Guides who complete all 234 miles will join the hundreds of people who have done the walk, including Oxford Fieldpaths Society, as well as the Ramblers. Her first venture, The Seven Shires Way, a walk along the Oxfordshire county boundary which she launched in 2002, has been chosen by Girlguiding Oxfordshire for its 2010 centenary Big Walk Challenge. It's not the first route she has created. She has spent the past six years developing a 174-mile footpath re-tracing the Romans' footsteps between the settlements of Alchester (Bicester), Silchester, near Reading and Corinium (Cheltenham). For Elaine Steane, their influence seeps out of every inch of Oxfordshire's landscape. What have the Romans done for us? As the revolutionaries in Monty Python's Life of Brian pointed out, not much - apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order. The traditional circular shape was due to a suspicion that the devil, or evil, could find no corner in which to hide." THE OXFORD TIMES Discover what the Romans did By Maggie Hartford The Roman Way. They were called lengthman's houses because the occupant was responsible for looking after a particular length of the canal. Extract "The circular stone building to the left of the canal bridge at Cerney Wick is one of five lengthman's houses built along the course of the canal in 1790. Each walk is accompanied by an OS map and illustrations of points of interest, as well as notes and fact boxes on points of archaeological and geographical interest. Practical details such as bus routes, tea rooms and accommodation are also provided. Steane has made life easy for casual walkers by breaking the hike into 17 manageable sections, which are then divided into shorter segments, so the book contains walks suited to all ages and abilities. She brings similar expertise and enthusiasm to this latest title, devoted to a 174-mile walk on Roman ways that form a triangle from Chesterton in Oxfordshire, Cirencester in Gloucestershire, and on to Silchester, a Roman walled town in Hampshire, finishing at the Roman military fort at Alchester.
By Clover Stroud of the Sunday Telegraph The Roman Way By Elaine Steane (Reardon Publishing) Elaine Steane is a keen rambler whose previous book focused on the Seven Shires Way, a 234-mile walk in central England.
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