If they had truly wandered (like William Wordsworth in the Lake District, composing poems in his head) they would have taken months. As it was, visiting 17 towns and villages along the way, they took just a disciplined, schedule-meeting 19 days.

On Thursday morning as they gathered at Veterans' Park in Civic (bound for the Australian War Memorial) their leader Mick Donaldson explained that "We're a bunch of ex SAS veterans and we've formed a charity to raise funds for wounded soldiers [including those with mental struggles] and defence families with needs".

Those deserving folk have a special place in the affections of SAS veterans, he emphasised, because it is "a sad fact" that because special operations soldiers "are in the forefront of combat operations" they do have their ample share of casualties of war.

A splendidly kilted bagpiper, SAS veteran Iain Townsley, did the long wander with the warriors and was conspicuously present in Veterans' Park on Thursday. Along the wander, he related, he had played in the evenings for various people who'd shown them hospitality. And, when the wanderers had diverted to the home town of an SAS man killed in action, he had played the melancholy lament The Flowers Of The Forest at a memorial service given for the man's family.

Townsley's blue kilt was eye-catchingly gorgeous. He explained with pride that this wandering outing is the first time it has been worn in Australia as part of SAS dress regalia. Its use has only just been authorised and its fetching blueness combines the contrasting blues of the Cambridge and Oxford boating crews, commemorating the fact that men of those universities fought with the SAS in the western desert in 1941.

To enlighten yourself about the wanderers and to donate to their good works you can wander to www.wanderingwarriors.org