John Parry decided he didn’t want to sit around and do nothing and has now become a social media sensation
When John Parry fell off a ladder in 2024 and was taken to hospital for treatment for a variety of serious injuries that included a skull fracture, brain bleeds, a broken back and a painful list of other injuries it was a pivotal point in his life.
Most people would be traumatised by the accident and the injuries but worse was to come for this 78-year-old grandad from Pontypool because, while being treated in hospital, it was found he had bladder cancer that has also spread to his right kidney.
But John’s reaction to this horrendous period in his life is surprising – he didn’t want to sit around and feel distraught, he decided to walk 450 miles across the country, joined by stars and strangers, to raise money for four charities and this decision has led to John becoming a viral social media sensation.
On TikTok, Instagram and Facebook John’s got an impressive number of followers that his grandchildren would be proud of, on his account called Welsh Grandad. John, originally from Pontypool but now living near Clacton-on-Sea, says: “I’ve got nine grandchildren, six great grandchildren, and all their friends, everybody calls me Welsh Grandad, they don’t know me as anything else.”
Now lots of people across the social media world also know him as Welsh Grandad. John explains: “One day I was taking one of them to football practice and had two hours in the car waiting.
“I’ve been trying to talk to people about cancer for a while, how you react, when you hear those three words, ‘you’ve got cancer’. Until you’re told that, you don’t know how you’re going to react. You don’t know how you feel.
“So I put the phone on the steering wheel, said ‘Hi, I’m Welsh grandad and I’ve got cancer’, chatted a bit and didn’t think about it much. Then boom, the response was so good and so I did another one and it’s built from there really.”
But talking about it online wasn’t enough for John, he felt compelled to try and do something more. He says: “I wondered what I could do, I can’t cure cancer or help like that, I’m not a doctor, but I can walk, I can put one foot in front of the other.”
So a seed of an idea was planted and quickly grew into ‘Grandad’s Great Walk’ – a fundraising walk for four charities, Cancer Research UK, Macmillan Cancer Support, and Farleigh Hospice, Essex, and St David’s Hospice, Newport, aiming to raise £75,000. Currently, at the time of writing the total is £54,318,03 – see what it is now here.
The 460 mile walk began on June 1, 2026 in Lowestoft and is due to end on Tuesday, August 11 at St David’s Head, Pembrokeshire, and John chose to walk along the Via Beata route, a pilgrimage pathway from east to west as he thought it would be “a bit different from the normal routes”.
Website British Pilgrimage Trust says: “The name ‘Via Beata’ means ‘way of blessing’ and this fully mapped route goes through some of the most beautiful places in the country. One of the reasons this walk is special is because every 10 miles of the route there is a hand carved artwork with a story from the Bible.”
It also seemed the perfect route because John wanted a journey that not only hasn’t been travelled that often and wanted to finish in his native Wales.
John started his training in January, just a short walk that grew every day, and where his mantra was born, ‘one day at a time, one step at a time’ and that is how he treats every day of this gruelling and epic walk.
John says he has been inspired by the beautiful countryside he is walking through, that being surrounded by nature feels special but, of course, there have been challenges on the journey too.
John says: “I did get a large blister on the ball of one of my feet but it only hurt 50% of the time! And I don’t really go to bed, more like collapse into it!”
But John says the biggest challenge has been farmers and landowners in England not maintaining public rights of way along the route, so some are blocked and impassable and some are in too rough a state to continue.
He says: “It has been hard at times because you can’t train for walking through the fields where you’ve got long grass, three foot high, and you’ve got ploughed fields and ditches, and you don’t know where you’re stepping, and you’ve got hedges where you can’t get through, and you’ve got to turn around and walk back to find a different route.
“When the route ahead is full of brambles and nettles, you know, eight feet, 10 feet high, you can’t get through it. You’ve got to go all the way back and try the next field along and that adds mileage and time.”
The weather, although a bonus not getting soaked by rain, has been an aspect of the project to navigate with thought, with John’s rucksack packed daily with food, snacks and a sizeable amount of water and electrolytes.
But this Welsh grandad is not on his own. He says: “My family are supporting me, all of them, from my grandchildren, to my daughter, to my son-in-law; all of them. We find a campsite that is fairly central to each week of walking and they pick me up at the end of that day’s journey, take me to the tent and then drop me off at the same point the next day.” John says he sleeps on a comfortable blow-up bed in a wooden pod.
Although it has gone smoothly so far using his planned route, map and compass, John said one day he did get totally lost. He explains: “I wasn’t concentrating and literally took the wrong road and I was rescued by a lovely lady on a bike.
“She asked me if I was lost, I was, and then asked if she could walk with me and push her bike along when she found out what I was doing. I said, ‘of course you can!’. She asked if she could walk with me another day and has even driven for an hour and a half just to walk with me.”
John says that this is the one aspect of the walk that has surprised him and makes him rather emotional too – the level of support he has received online after every end of the day social media post, the amount of donations made, but also the number of people who have wanted to join him for a section of the walk – the vast majority of which have been strangers.
He says: “I’ve walked on my own and I’ve walked with some amazing people. I got a message from Lauren Oakley from Strictly Come Dancing asking if she could walk with me on the Worcester Cathedral section, and she did, she joined me for nine and a half miles.
“But she said if I walk with you then at the end you have to dance with me, so we found a pub with a public garden and had a waltz. She was delightful, absolutely delightful.” On Lauren’s TikTok account she is also keen to praise John, telling her followers it was ‘My favourite day this summer!’.
John has been joined by families with children who are on holiday or live on the route and one supporter who travelled up from Brighton to join him for part of the walk. He says, rather in awe of it all, “The support I’ve been getting is phenomenal!”
But through the most challenging moments John has kept going thinking about people living with cancer and has kept them close to his heart, in every video saying he is thinking about everyone touched by the disease and carrying them with him.
He says: “I keep thinking about those people and they’re walking with me, all those are walking with me. I never stop thinking about them and I just keep going, just put one foot in front of the other. I have never, ever, not once thought about giving up or wishing I hadn’t started it. And what keeps me going is all those people who’ve got cancer, who are worse off than me.”
John’s family, friends and supporters are obviously proud of him, but if you tell John the whole of Wales is proud of him too, it brings a tear to his eye. He might have lived in England for many years but the love of the homeland has never left him and he is now looking forward to finishing the walk in Wales.
The night before a walk so epic is about to begin most people might feel nervous, not be able to sleep or celebrate the landmark day with a ‘last meal’ but John just treated it as any other day.
He says: “I’m not one to get over-excited, I was happy we had all the planning in place and then I just got up and got going. When I cross the finish line I’ll probably just go, ‘oh hello, can I have a drink please?!’, I’ll have a cup of coffee and a sit down!”
But John says as the final days of the epic walk appear on the horizon he has two main, over-arching thoughts about what comes next. He says: “I’ll walk back along the whole route if some kind, rich person will donate £100,000 to each of the four charities, do you think there is a millionaire out there who could do that?”
If no rich donors come forward the Welsh grandad is not going to stop looking for ways to raise more money, even though he says he knows there’ll be a list of gardening chores from his wife to do when he comes home.
He says: “I don’t know why I got this feeling deep inside me that this is not the end. Maybe I’m being silly now, but I think I might have been given this so I do more to help people.”
See John’s progress via his TikTok or Instagram accounts called Welsh Grandad and see his donation page here.
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