Runner Ricky Taylor, 31, from St Neots, raised almost £1000 after he completed the Great North Run on Sunday 10 September.

Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust’s charity, ‘dreamdrops’’, is set to receive the donation for children who are either being nursed on Holly Ward or the Special Care Baby Unit at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, or who are being nursed in the community.  The money will be used to purchase those little extras to make life a little more comfortable for children when they are unwell.

Ricky said: “I choose the dreamdrops charity because I wanted to give something back to a local charity.  Once I read what fantastic work dreamdrops do for the children and the local community that was enough for me.

“I was due to run on my own, but my friend Ben Reading was doing the run also, so we run together for about 10 miles, which helped me massively.  My training has been a bit sketchy to say the least, and I trained regularly up to 10 miles at a time on the streets of St Neots.  I knew if I could do that then the great crowd in the north east would get me to the finish line, which they did thankfully.”

The Great North Run is one the biggest half marathons in the world.  Ricky completed the 13.1 mile half marathon in 1 hour 48 mins, and came 5746th out of 44,000 people.

Anne-Marie Hamilton, Chairman of the ‘dreamdrops’ fundraising committee said: “Thank you Ricky for choosing to run on behalf of ‘dreamdrops’.  You have raised a substantial amount of money for our charity and we cannot thank you enough.”

Ricky set a modest target of £500, and on Sunday it reached £840.  Ricky’s just giving page is still open, if you would like to help him you can find his page here:  https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ricky-taylor2

Money raised through ‘dreamdrops’ is used to provide additional items for the Special Care Baby Unit and Children’s Ward, as well as children who are cared for at home. For further information on how you can help raise funds for the charity please visit www.dreamdropschildrenscharity.org or email dreamdrops.dreamdrops@nhs.net.

(Photo: Ricky Taylor with his medal after completing the Great North Run.)