A Carlisle first aid trainer took on a mighty challenge to raise funds and awareness for a charity with a vital role to play both during and after the coronavirus pandemic.

In normal times, Judy Bloxham is a workplace first aid trainer with St John Ambulance, providing people with the vital skills they might one day need to save someone's life.

But with lockdown preventing this and most of St John Ambulance's activities from taking place, the national charity has suffered a serious setback in its fundraising opportunities.

Yet the organisation has been going above and beyond throughout the coronavirus crisis, giving more than 90,000 hours in April alone to augment the NHS' ambulance and accident and emergency workforce.

With this in mind, Judy decided to take on her own version of the '2.6 challenge' - a common form of fundraising challenge in recent weeks, stemming from the fact April 26 would have been the date of this year's London Marathon were it not for the lockdown.

"I decided to do six sets of exercise classes in two hours," Judy said.

"Three cardio workouts and three spinning bike workouts. No rest in between, constantly for two hours."

Her son Jimmy joined in with some of the exercises, while her daughter Natasha helped to spread the word of the challenge by broadcasting it live on social media.

"It was a lot of hard work, but it was fantastic fun," Judy said.

"Filming it live via Facebook was a nice way of proving to people that I'd done it."

Judy raised a total of £389, nearly twice her original goal.

For Judy, an equally important goal for the challenge was take the opportunity to remind people of St John Ambulance's important role in providing, first aid training emergency aid at large gatherings, and in helping to support the NHS, before during and after the coronavirus crisis.

"Big events like Kendal Calling, football matches, the Racecourse and others some of these are paid for, which helps to support the charity.

"But at the moment, there's nothing coming into the charity from any of its normal sources of revenue.

"Once things get back up and running, people are going to want our support again."