Miles of smiles from Metabolic Mile

John Burniston and partner Samantha Marshall, from Cecil Street, raised a fantastic £4,100 from a walk and race night for Metabolic Support UK, a charity close to their hearts.

The couple’s one-year-old son Oscar was diagnosed with MCADD, a rare metabolic disorder which means that his body cannot burn fat down to use as an energy source.

The day began with a walk from the Rolls Royce Club in Skipton Road, followed by a race day, raffle and children’s treasure hunt in the grounds of the club.

John said: “The event was a huge success and we received an amazing amount of support from our friends, family and the local community.

“We had a really good turnout for the walk despite the weather, around 80 took part with more coming to join us after for the rest of the day.

“After the walk we had a kids’ treasure hunt out in the grounds of the club where they had to find some painted stones with various cartoon characters on based on the clues.”

Tanya Brindle, a newly appointed community ambassador from the charity, also gave a speech and explained the reasons for the fund-raising.

John added: “We feel this achieved our aim of raising awareness about metabolic disorders as we had a lot of positive comments and questions about the charity, and Oscar’s condition in particular.

“This was followed by the pre-recorded horse races and the auction race where a lot of individuals were very generous with their bids, which gave our total a good boost.

“Next came the huge raffle where we had more than 60 amazing prizes, all donated by local businesses and people. Lastly, Andy Byrne kindly offered to close the afternoon by singing a few songs for us as the day wrapped up.

“All in all it was a very successful event and everybody said it was a really good day for the kids as well as the grown ups.

“Our final total far outweighed our expectations and we are overwhelmed with the support and generosity of our local community. We loved being able to give something back to enable the great work to continue to help families who find themselves in the position we did.

“It’s such a great charity and means a lot to us that we could do something for them.”