Weston-super-Mare over 60s group marks VE Day with tank push
Social club members in their 70s have completed a tank push to commemorate VE Day.The 60+ Social Singles group in Weston-super-Mare, in Somerset, walked the length of the promenade with cardboard tanks mounted on shopping trolleys.The group regularly participates in "wacky" fundraising challenges and have previously completed abseils and skydives. John Lenney, a Royal Air Force Veteran and organiser of the push, said: "It's for all the people who fell in the wars, to keep their memory going and also to teach the young ones what it's all about."
The tank push also raised money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association to fund a voice box. The group has 50 members who are single and many of them are bereaved.It offers older people a chance to socialise and keep fit, with weekly activities like dancing, walking cricket and walking netball.
Margaret Appleford, who organised the challenge alongside Mr Lenney, said the group is "one happy family". "For a lot of people, once they've lost their husbands or their wives or they've got divorced - when they become a certain age - they feel that there's nothing else left for them,' she said."We made this group up and it's just grown and grown and grown.'
Ms Appleford said the fundraising aspect of the group helps to give people a purpose. "We're doing it for other people as well as ourselves,' she said."We're having fun, but we're also making other people happy.'
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