Gordon Todd will feel lucky if he averages four miles an hour as he tramps the West Highland Way, but ironically he is doing the gruelling walk as a charity fund-raiser for creatures which can travel more than 10 times faster, when they feel like it!

The 42 year-old from Livingston and four student friends from his time at Oatridge are setting out later this month on the 97-mile slog from Milngavie to Fort William to boost the coffers of the Scottish Greyhound Sanctuary. It looks after and finds new homes for the dogs once their racing careers come to an end. Some are sick or injured and have to be nursed back to health.

Gordon and his partner already “foster” animals until new owners can be found. They share a home with two cats, two collies and two “adopted” greyhounds from the sanctuary which the couple decided to keep. Gordon says: “Greyhounds make great house pets and only need a 20 minute walk in the morning and another one in the evening. Apart from that they’re 45 mile-an-hour couch potatoes. They just want to lie around doing not very much.”

Since completing a course in Countryside Management at the College, where he was Student President for 2009/2010, Gordon has worked as an events organiser at the on-campus Scottish National Equestrian Centre.

He plans to take a break to spend five days on the West Highland Way, “wild camping” along the route in tents carried by a support vehicle driven by his brother. “I’ve done a lot of walking, but never over such a long distance”, he says. “I just hope the weather is kind to us”.

He has not set a target figure for his fundraising. “I just want us to raise as much money as we can. A lot of the people who race greyhounds don’t want them once they’ve got to about four years old, because they are beginning to lose their speed. Some dogs end up being put down, especially if they are injured, and some are in really bad shape when the reach the sanctuary, because they haven’t been looked after properly, but it isn’t cheap to help them get well again.”

See also: www.scottishgreyhoundsanctuary.com