MORE than a century on from his most famous feat - the celebrated 'Walk to China' that got no further than Darwen Moors when the farmer he asked there for directions was unable to point the way to Peking - Blackburn's legendary, long-gone miniature muscleman, Strong Dick, marches again this week . . . to the tune of a Latin/jazz number composed in his honour.

For learning recently of the beefy bantam's abandoned endeavour, professional musician Howard Haigh, of Lancaster, was as captivated by it as the crowds who saw him off as he embarked on it in the early 1890s.

As it happened, Spanish guitar specialist Howard was putting together the tunes and songs with a "travelling around Lancashire" theme for the concert he is staging together with a 12-piece brass band and the Blackburn People's Choir on Wednesday night at the Hornby Lecture Theatre in the town's Central Library.

Now, his "I'm Walking to China" tribute to Strong Dick - real name, Richard Thompson - is to be a highlight of the event.

But though the escapade it commemorates was a flop, Dick, who died in 1945, aged 77, really could stay the pace when it came to long-distance walking. For though he is best remembered for the feats of strength and escapology tricks that he used to perform in return for donations from the spectators he used to attract on Blackburn's old market square and anywhere else a crowd might gather, he had several epic foot-slogging adventures to his credit.

One was when he walked all the way to London in 1928 to see Blackburn Rovers triumph in the FA Cup Final.

Another was when he was engaged by a showman in Edinburgh to accept the challenge of publicly fasting for a fortnight. His employer vanished after the first week, leaving Dick penniless and hungry. He walked back home from Scotland, but claimed to have had the last laugh - saying he had secretly managed to eat two slices of bread and an egg each day of his supposed fast!

In 1906, when he was approaching his forties, he walked from the centre of Blackburn to the Halfway House pub at Samlesbury on the road to Preston and back again while carrying a 56lb weight - winning a prize of a purse of gold and silver.

It was revealed that he chose the there-and-back route in order to escape the ha'penny toll he would have had to pay to cross the bridge over the River Ribble if he had gone for a straight journey to Preston. And after such a canny paso doble, it's apt, after all, for his antics all that time ago to be set to Latin-American music today. Ol!

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