Company to make a splash with its Severn charity challenge
A Shropshire company aims to make a big splash with its £10,000 fundraising challenge this year to support the Severn Hospice in Shrewsbury.
Staff and friends of Morris Lubricants, Britain’s leading family-owned, independent oil blenders and marketers based in Shrewsbury, plan to complete the 214-mile Severn Way long-distance footpath in seven different ways.
They will follow the course of the River Severn from its source on Plynlumon near Llanidloes to the Bristol Channel on foot, in a canoe and coracle, by swimming, cycling and rafting and on horseback.
The footpath will be broken down into five-mile sections for staff and friends to tackle whichever way they choose and all the money raised will go to Severn Hospice.
Morris Lubricants’ chairman Gareth Jones and distribution manager Graham Fewtrell hope to make their own coracles to navigate part of the River Severn near Shrewsbury, while the company’s management accountant, Phil Gittins, who is co-ordinating the fundraising effort, is planning a raft race from Montford Bridge to Shrewsbury in June.
Phil hopes to attract a maximum of 20 teams from within the company and its suppliers and customers. Each team will pay a £50 entry fee and pledge to raised £200.
He is also planning a pub quiz for staff and friends on April 25 and he and sales manager Steve Dawe have pledged to tackle the Severn mile sponsored swim on August 18.
Staff members Steve Reading, Caroline Walton, Sam Lynch and Jess Walker, have also signed up to do the Severn Hospice fire walk over hot coals at Albrighton Hall Hotel on February 22.
(Last year, the company raised £20,000 for the Teenage Cancer Trust by scaling the 64 ‘county tops’ of England, Wales, Scotland and the Isles of Wight and Man, has accepted a new challenge in 2013. The charity has special significance to the company, as late employee Adam Fewtrell died of a rare form of childhood bone cancer in 2011 at the age of 20. Adam’s father Graham and sister Amy both work for Morris Lubricants.
“Following on from the incredible success of last year’s fundraising for the Teenage Cancer Trust, the company has decided this year’s charity will be a local one, the Severn Hospice,” explained Phil.
“The Severn Hospice provides free end of life care for the people of Shropshire and Mid Wales at three centres in Shrewsbury, Telford and Newtown and also in the patients’ own homes. Around 2,500 people each year benefit from their services.
“As a charity, the hospice relies on fundraising to survive and needs to raise £4.5 million a year to continue its good work.”
Donations to the fundraising effort can be made on the Just Giving website at www.justgiving.com/morris-lubricants.
