A mother has raised money for her son's school and her friend's campaign to take her daughter to the USA for stem cell treatment by completing her first marathon- losing two toenails in the process. 

This year, Laurie Crowe from Hexham raised £600 for Hexham Priory School and Ella's Hope as a result of completing her first Kielder marathon.

Speaking about the challenge she said: "I love the idea of doing something that I don't think I can do and prove myself wrong.

"I read somewhere that only 1 per cent of the world's population run a Marathon in their lifetime, so thought, right, I'll be in the 1 per cent.

"Then I thought that if I'm going to do something challenging, so I thought that I might as well do some good with it too and raise money for something important.

"So I decided to take part in the Kielder marathon - which I think is beautiful with perfect views.

"I chose to raise money for Ella's Hope, as I often wish there was something I could do to make my friend Gemma's life easier.

"I think more than anyone deserves a break and recognition for all she does for her little girl Ella who suffered a bleed on her brain at 6 weeks old, which left her with a hypoxic-ischemic injury that caused her to have quadriplegic cerebral palsy with spasticity and dystonia seizures.

"The other cause is to help support my son's school. The aim is to split the money from what I raised between the two.

"I am very grateful for what people gave, and that I was able to raise that amount of money, considering how expensive life is at the minute. 

" I said it would be first and last but that's unlikely as I enjoyed it and only lost two toenails.

"I'd only run 7/8 miles previous this year, so I'm pretty proud I managed to rock up and run 26 miles.

"It's definitely mind over matter, my body was ready to stop but thinking about the short-term pain I was in (my pain is temporary) in comparison to Gemma's daily pain/stress.

"So my pain felt like nothing. "