More than 130 people donned their walking shoes and sun cream to tackle the 14 mile trek from Driffield Rugby Club to The New Inn at Bridlington in aid of Meningitis UK.

It was the final leg of the charity’s eight-day Walk of Roses from Blackpool to Bridlington, and was kick-started with a donation of £300 from Driffield Rotary Club.

More than 70 pupils from Bridlington School Sports College, some in fancy dress, took part in the walk to support classmate Elyse McLeod, aged 16, from Driffield who lost her three-week-old daughter to the disease less than six months ago.

Ahead of the walk Elyse, who dressed as a fairy for the event and was accompanied by her family, said: “I am so pleased to be doing this walk and I never expected so many of my friends to join in too. I’m aiming to raise £5,000 for the charity so hopefully everyone will be feeling generous.”

Harriet Linfoot, 23, of Dunnington joined walkers at Driffield for the second day of a 35 mile trek from Market Weighton.

Harriet, who raised £300 in sponsorship, battled bacterial meningitis when she was 16 and this was her way of raising awareness of the disease.

“I started to feel ill when I was in the middle of my GCSEs but I thought I was just run down from revising. In the middle of the night I got worse and was taken to hospital, but it wasn’t until a few days later that I woke up and realised I’d had bacterial meningitis,” she said.

Harriet and Elyse were joined by groups of fundraisers from across the region, including Hutton Cranswick, Driffield, Hessle and Hull with the number of participants beating that of previous years.

Tanya Thurlow, of Cranswick said: “We walk for a good cause every year and we saw this advertised and thought why not. We did the race for life last year and thought we would have a go at this one.”

Meningitis UK chief executive Steve Dayman walked the entire route and hopes to have raised almost £30,000 for the charity’s ‘Search 4 a vaccine’ campaign.

Mr Dayman said: “This event is so important in helping us to raise money to reach our goal of finding a vaccine.”