Last orders

Once a solicitor, always a solicitor - that's the message behind a letter sent to us by Ian Pearson, a one-time City lawyer who has chucked it all in to escape the rat race.

Mr Pearson, who spent 11 years at Nabarro Nathanson in litigation and employment, followed by 18 months at Linklaters as a professional support lawyer, cannot quite drop the habit of advising people of the best way to proceed and has set up a company taking hikers on guided walks in the Quantock Hills in deepest Somerset, putting them up in his recently refurbished Edwardian guesthouse.

Mr Pearson tells us that his walking clients appear to be far more appreciative than his old litigation clients, while the only uphill struggles he now faces are physical.

Here he is pictured with his partner Lynne, conducting what we are assured is some kind of 'risk assessment exercise'.

It appears he hasn't lost the lawyers' art of gentle sophistry either.

LINKS: www.ramblingroads.co.uk