A PENSIONER who has walked a marathon on Remembrance Sunday every year for a decade is calling time on his touching annual tribute.

Since 2008 Norman Smith has hiked 26.2 miles to seven church graveyards in and around his home in Kings Meadow.

The 75-year-old former RAF mechanic said hiking the route, which takes him past several Commonwealth war grave sites, is his personal way of paying respect to fallen servicemen and women.

Mr Smith, went on to qualify as a pilot after leaving the RAF, said: "I decided to start the walks after seeing these grave sites from the sky while I was a flying instructor many years ago.

"I love walking. I go for my own cause, it's just my own way of paying my respects.

"It means a lot to me, some of the pilots that were killed were so inexperienced, they were so young.

"I've completed 50,000 landings over 35 years; those young men who trained in war time probably wouldn't have had 500 landings, often in terrible weather in a propeller plane.

"I feel for them, having so much experience myself they were just beginners and they were killed."

The route takes him from his home to the war graves in Bicester, Middleton Stoney, Upper Heyford, Hardwick, Hethe, Caversfield and Launton, where a total of 152 casualties are buried.

Mr Smith says he leaves his home at around 7.20am to reach Upper Heyford in time for the remembrance ceremony.

He finished his final remembrance walk at 5.50pm on Sunday.

The avid rambler has previously put his seemingly boundless enthusiasm for walking to good use when in 2016 he set himself a “two-day campaign” to gather all the rubbish cluttering Bicester’s streets to highlight the issue of littering.

While he expects to have walked the equivalent of three-times around the globe by July next year.

However he admitted there was something 'special' about his Remembrance Sunday walks.

Mr Smith has now hung up his walking boots after completing this year's marathon on Remembrance Sunday, which also marked 100 years to the day since the Armistice.

He said: "It just seemed like the right time.

"I will miss it. But I never did it for charity or anything like that - it was just my way of paying my respects.

"I'm looking for a new project - at 75 the options are limited but you mustn't give in."