The 12 stops in Burwell raises over £3,400 for hospital charity

James Pryor, Laura Talbot, Martin Hayes and Sally Daniels pictured with the cheque for the Macmillan Unit. Photo: My WiSH Charity.
An annual pub crawl round the village of Burwell has helped to raise over £3,400 for a hospital charity.
The annual event, which is in its eighth year during which it has collected over £20,000 for a host of charitable causes, was targeted at raising money for the Macmillan Unit, at the West Suffolk Hospital, in Bury St Edmunds.
And the aptly named “12 stops in Burwell” challenge resulted in a total of £3,461.79 being raised.
Organised by James Pryor, who lives in the neighbouring village of Fordham, it was held on Christmas Eve with a group of 20 people taking part.
They stopped off at four watering holes in the village: The Anchor, Five Bells, British Legion and The Fox; with eight other locations of friends and family.
Along with bucket collections and money donated via their online Just Giving page the money was collected and handed over to the My WiSH Charity which supports all the work carried out at the hospital.
The latest fundraising initiative was in memory of Tracey Hayes who was treated at the unit and who suffered from non hodgkins lymphoma but who sadly died in June last year.
Tracey (pictured above) and her husband, Martin, were well known to the charity as Martin, along with his friend from the village Mike Wright, ran a marathon back in 2017 raising £7,500 for My WiSH to help purchase equipment for Ward G1 and the Macmillan Unit.
James said: “Every year our group of friends gets together to embrace the Christmas spirit by doing a bar crawl around the village to raise money for a good cause. Every year we get such incredible support from the community, friends and family, which we are incredibly grateful for.”
He said the latest event was “even more meaningful than most” as Tracey was one of the “kindest, driven, loving, most welcoming person I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”
James added: “When Tracey first started her battle with cancer the My WiSH Charity went above and beyond to support her and her family. This charity stays close to Martin’s heart and he said he was delighted we were able to raise anything we could for such an amazing cause.
“They do such a fantastic job in supporting the community and the hospital and the example of that is never more sharpening than with Tracey. They just do everything in their power to help people and they really did that for Tracey.
“They fundraise for all wards, departments and services, supporting everything from emergency to the elderly, bones to babies, and cataract to cancer care.”
Sally Daniels, fundraising manager for My WiSH, thanked James and said: “James has been an amazing, enthusiastic fundraiser. We were so sorry to hear the sad news about Tracey. Her and Martin were just so welcoming from the first moment we met them. The amount raised by James, and all involved just shows what an incredible lady she was”.