Walker uses love of Lake District to help with Alzheimer's diagnosis

• Video report by ITV News Correspondent Damon Green

Ever since he was diagnosed, Sion Jair has been using his love of some of Britain's most beautiful scenery to help him cope with Alzheimer's Disease.

Every day he walks the peaks and fells of the Lake District, guided by his intimate knowledge of its paths.

Now he's in a race to pass on that knowledge to others before the condition consumes his memory.

Sion has walked in these hills his whole life.

It's something he's always loved, and when he was diagnosed with dementia he feared that this experience would be lost to him forever.

"It came as a real shock. I felt numb mentally," he says.

"I didn't know what to say for a while and all I thought about for days and days afterwards, probably longer than that, was the word Alzheimer's. That's all that went through my mind."

He adds: "You've been given a death sentence, in a sense. You never know when it's going to be and you just don't know how to deal with it initially until you start coming to terms with it."

The only comfort he found was walking.

His memory might fail him but his abiding love of this place was as strong as ever and planning a walk every day helped him to see a path he knew he could follow.

"I just think 'I'll do that tomorrow,' and I don't think beyond that," he says.

"And that has helped me cope, because I'm just concentrating on what I can do both time wise and also physically and mentally."

He climbs one hill near Coniston every day, sometimes twice.

He knows every ridge on the horizon and every rock on the path, and even as he struggles with dementia these hills give him something he can depend on.

Now with the support of his partner, Wendy, he works as a teacher in mountain navigation, helping others as a way for dementia sufferers to realise their lives still matter.

"If they can pass something on to somebody else, something that's inherent in them, then that's going to give them a sense of value," he says.

"They're not just going to sit back in their chair thinking 'my life's over, I've got nothing to offer.'

"They have got something to offer. Everybody has got something to offer."

Alzheimer's is a condition Sion can never escape, but the mountains have helped him find his own way to cope.