Footsore reporter Chris Webber has completed an epic fundraising mission by walking 450 miles.

The Northern Echo journalist is raising money to help pay for a commemorative stone for miners killed in the 1909 West Stanley Burns Pit Disaster in County Durham.

Although there is an existing memorial to all 168 of the dead, many were buried without headstones in a mass trench on land behind St Andrew’s Church, in Stanley, County Durham.

Chris helped the funds to approach the £6,000 target by staging a 450-mile sponsored walk from Britain’s oldest recorded mine, a Neolithic flint site in Sussex, to Stanley.

He was given a hero’s reception when he completed the penultimate leg on time, symbolically walking into Durham on the day of the 120th Durham Miners Gala.

Chris was greeted with a free pint by ex-miner Geoff Cutting, now landlord of The Dun Cow, the nearest pub to the gala showfield, on Durham’s Racecourse.

And the reporter said he could not have had a better reception.

He said: “I’ve had a few drink at pubs on evening stops as I made my way up the country, but this was by far the best. The fact that it was Banner Bitter was all the more appropriate on the day of the Miners’ Gala.”

Chris went on to complete the trek by finishing the last eight miles to Stanley, and the St Andrew’s burial site.

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