100 mile charity walk for Salisbury lady's 100th birthday

99 year-old Phyll Babb from Salisbury will celebrate her 100th year by doing 100 walks, each of one mile, to raise money for a local homelessness charity.

Phyll Babb plans to walk from her home, around the city’s famous Cathedral Close and back again. She will be using a Rollator aid - the walking aid made famous by Captain Sir Tom Moore.

All money she raises will go to Salisbury Trust for the Homeless (STFH), which helps local homeless people get their lives back on track.

Phyll who celebrated her 99th birthday last month said, “I only decided to do this very recently. I was at the annual Salisbury Trust for the Homeless fundraising summer party and I thought ‘here am I having a lovely time, and still fit and healthy. I can do something to help those less fortunate than I am’.”

Phyll whose birthday was on July 13th plans to do the walks – which take her about 45 minutes – twice a week over the next year so that she can finish the last one by the time of her 100th birthday on 13 July 2025.

She is asking the public to make donations to STFH via JustGiving, the online charity fundraising platform.

STFH says it has helped hundreds of people ‘turn their lives around’ in recent years.  Founded in 1987, the charity helps clients regain confidence and self-esteem, learn life skills, find education, training and employment opportunities, and access permanent accommodation, so returning to independent living.

Support needs include mental health issues, learning disability, emotional support, drug and alcohol misuse, anti-social behaviour, budgeting, benefits claims and tenancy support.

“STFH has helped such a lot of people who have been in its houses retrain and get back to normal living,” said Phyll, a former chairman of the Trust and a long-time volunteer for the Salisbury charity.

Gordon Pardy, head of fundraising for STFH added, “We are so grateful to Phyll for undertaking this typically gutsy fundraising project in her 100th year. Our charity does not receive any financial support from central or local government and so we are very much dependant on the generosity of the public in Wiltshire and further afield.”

Phyll was born in Bideford in north Devon, and went to Exeter University before working as a teacher. In 1949 she adventurously travelled by sea alone to Jamaica where she taught in a girl’s grammar school for three years. After a brief spell in England, she took off again to Vancouver in western Canada before returning to the UK to look after her disabled mother.

Back home in Bideford, she carried on teaching, but was also a keen member of the local yacht club, becoming secretary and then Rear Commodore.

In 1986 she retired and the following year moved to Salisbury, where she became involved in a range of voluntary work. Phyll first became involved with STFH in 1998 and was chairman from 2004 to 2009.

DONATE HERE: www.justgiving.com/page/phyll-babb-1722779310016