Fundraising 98-year-old Diana O’Flynn is storming ahead with her charity challenge – Around The Sitting Room in 80 Days.
Diana, known to many as Dick, lives in West Hill, and has supported many good causes over many years – and her latest enterprise sees her on a sponsored indoor cycle ride.
Diana’s aim is to cycle for at least half an hour every day until June 30. She started on April 12.
Niece Kate Fraser gave the Herald an update this week: “She has raised nearly £1,500 now and she is following the challenge to the letter.
“She chooses a TV programme to watch, sets the clock beside her and off she goes for a full 30 minutes.
“And she walks off to the shop three times a week with her walker and pink high-viz vest! She is great company and endlessly positive and enthusiastic.”
Readers can follow her progress on Instagram: aroundthesittingroomin80days
The charity Diana has chosen to help is WLM Katherine Price Hughes House, a project set up in West London by her great grandmother in 1887 to help those leaving prison to transition to the community. Still a successful charity to this day, it has the capacity to help 20 residents at a time, all offenders leaving prison.
Diana was born in South Wales and was the first of her family not to go to university – choosing instead to do teacher training.
She taught children of the British Forces in Germany after the war, where she met her husband, Paddy.
After they were married, the pair opened their first children’s home in South Wales, moving later to the Lake District – Diana always maintained the policy that no child would be refused.
In later years, she went on to set up a school in Majorca and on return to England, cared for old people in Gloucester, before moving to West Hill.
She has volunteered in Ottery hospital’s Linden ward, in the Brainwave charity shop in Mill Street and with the National Trust.