A HARDY group of friends put their best foot forward at the weekend and threw their backs into pulling a truck 26 miles for charity.

Matt Sturgess, Paul Cave, Dave Welstead, Lee Crawford, Daffyd Wright, Josh Aplin, Mark Vukcevic, Harry Lauste and Martin Wiles pulled the 2.5tonne truck from Boscombe Pier to Sandbanks in aid of the Lewis-Manning Hospice and Forest Holme Hospice.

The group, which included a policeman, fireman, a man in training for the Royal Marines, a carpenter and builder, had all been training for The Big Pull for Cancer challenge since October last year.

They set-off from Boscombe Pier at 8am on Saturday, towing the truck along the seafront to Shore Road, over the Twin Sails Bridge, through Broadstone and Poole Park before ending up in Sandbanks car park nearly nine hours later.

Accompanied by family and friends with collection buckets as well as representatives from the two local charities, the lads were cheered on by people along the route.

Paul Cave said: “In total it took us nearly nine hours – eight hours and 55 minutes to be precise – and we raised in excess of £1,000 (on the day).

“There really was a lot of support, especially when you got back down towards Broadstone and Lilliput and surrounding areas.

“People were on the side of the road cheering us on, with banners and horns.

“And the Britannia (pub) was packed out for the evening event as well.

“A few of us will have some aches and pains in their legs and backs but nothing awful.”

Matt Sturgess added: “It was so good. The training definitely was worth it – the miles we put in paid off.

“We had so much support we just floated along, it was great.”

The group hope to smash their overall target of £10,000 and will be doing a final count of the money later this week.

Maria Tidy, fundraising manager from Lewis Manning said: “It was absolutely fantastic. They all worked so hard to raise thousands of pounds for the two charities.”

And Justine Foster, community fundraiser at Forest Holme said they were “ecstatic” at the effort the lads had gone to.

For more information and details on the challenge, and to donate to the cause go to the website uk.viginmoneygiving.co m/team/bigpullforcancer or ‘Big Pull for Cancer’ on Facebook.