TO THE names of Roy and Alice Houghton and Walter Sheppard, aged between 77 and 80, we can now add that of another elderly miscreant, Patrick Newall, aged 71. For Mr Newall is the latest older person to cause worry and then embarrassment by temporarily disappearing.

While the Houghtons and Mr Sheppard evaporated off the face of France for a few days, Mr Newall's disappearance was briefer. The retired printer was walking the Pennine Way this week when he lost sight of his friend. So he booked into a bed and breakfast, intending to catch up with his walking partner in the morning.

While Mr Newall was taking advantage of his £21 B&B, he was the subject of a huge search costing an estimated £55,000.

An RAF helicopter and a police spotter aircraft were scrambled, and 90 rescuers scoured the moor near Keld, County Durham. The search began on Monday evening and was called off at 10.30am on Tuesday, when police received a call from the landlady of the Blue Bell guest house at Middleton-in-Teesdale.

Mr Newall apologised for causing such worry and wasted expense, saying: "I feel like a complete fool. I am so sorry for what has happened..."

He was in one sense a fool, elderly or otherwise. A quick phone call could have saved all the expensive bother, as well as diverting the inevitable reception from his wife, who told reporters that her husband was "in for a roasting when he gets home".

Yet there is something lovely about the image of Patrick Newall tucked up in rented sheets while his rescuers braved a wet May night. Perhaps he was irresponsible - but irresponsibility in the elderly is to be encouraged, for with luck we'll all get there one day, and then it will be our turn to become antiquated teenagers.

Besides, how encouraging to think of a 71-year-old walking the Pennine Way. This is not said in a patronising way, with a pat on the head for granddad. Certainly not - anyway, my hiking, travelling, globe-skimming 70-year-old mother might read this on the Internet, so a certain caution is wise.

All too often images of older people are negative, touching penury, ill health and dwindling opportunity as life narrows until it stops. Yet Patrick Newall and the pensioners lost in France offer another, brighter picture of fulfilled and busy lives. More than that, they show us life going on just as it was before, with travel and hiking and sipping vin ordinaire in a French street caf.

While the holidaying trio were missing presumed God knows what or where, a young relative pip-squeaked on the news: "We're going to cut up their passports."

Just let him try, I'd say. Travel, as I was pondering in this spot only recently, belongs to the young and the old, while those of us in the middle slog on with life. And why shouldn't we travel and hike to our last. That's certainly on my life's checklist.

Old age is lengthening, and for many is now the longest period of life. This presents many potential social problems, not least due to short-sighted policies on pensions, but it also heralds a great advance from the days when too many men dropped while they worked, old and then dead before their time.

The challenges of increased old age are many, embracing pensions and costs to the health service, while also accepting that some people might want to continue working in some capacity, while others will prefer to chase small, dimpled balls around an expensive field until hand will no longer grip club.

Whatever route is taken, old age should be about throwing off straight-jackets and looking for new challenges. And phoning home occasionally.

Updated: 10:40 Thursday, May 23, 2002