Fundraisers to walk from Villa Park to Old Trafford

Four men will walk 77 miles (124km) non-stop from Villa Park to Old Trafford football stadiums, to raise money for two local organisations.

Mark Barber, Chris Roberts and Mike Prosser, all from Halesowen, and Craig Rice, from Redditch hoping to raise £10,000 for the Aston Villa Foundation and Acorns Children's Hospice.

They will set off from Villa's home in Birmingham at about 09:00 BST on Saturday, and aim to get to Manchester United's ground at about 15:00 on Sunday, before the last game of the season - where Villa will be playing.

"It's non-stop it's going to be about 30 hours of continuous walking," said Mr Barber.

Acorns Hospice has three sites - in Worcester, Birmingham and Walsall - and provides palliative nursing care and support for local children and their families.

The Aston Villa Foundation is the football club's official charity, and works with children, young people and young adults living near the club and in wider Birmingham.

The group hopes the money will not only help the hospice fund its work, but also enable it to put on activities for families, including working with the foundation to host children at the Villa ground to give parents some time off.

The men will carry a match ball the whole way, briefly stopping at checkpoints that have been arranged in intervals of about eight miles.

"We'll head out of the top of Birmingham, heading up towards Stafford, then onto Stoke-on-Trent and then carry on up towards Manchester," said Mr Barber.

"We've got other small football clubs involved.

"We're stopping at Hednesford Town Football Club…a cricket club up by Manchester…some pubs along the way," he added.

"We've got every piece of kit in the world…anyone would think we were going up Everest," said Mr Barber.

He said he was feeling "nervous excitement" for the challenge, having never done a walk this long before.

"I'm really buzzing to get going, we've been talking and planning this project since July last year."

But he added: "I'm scared, I won't lie."

However, he said that when it got tough, the team would remind themselves why they were undertaking the task.

"[At] Five o'clock in the morning when it's absolutely raining cats and dogs, my feet feel like they're going to fall off, my lungs feel like they want to exit my mouth…I'll think: 'We've got it easy compared to some of the things that those families go through'."

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