A REMARKABLE 99-year-old from Salisbury has so far raised more than £8,000 for a homelessness charity.
Phyll Babb has been walking a mile a day from her Salisbury home to the Cathedral Close since August as part of a challenge to complete 100 miles before her 100th birthday on July 13.
She smashed this target just six months into the challenge, but this hasn’t stopped Phyll as she has decided to walk another 100 miles to raise even more money for the Salisbury Trust for the Homeless (STFH).
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Phyll has raised more than £8,000 and gift aid will bring this total to £9,000 which will enable the charity to continue to support those experiencing homelessness.
“I feel physically fitter as a result of doing this and also feel better mentally,” said Phyll after completing her 100 circuit.
“It is a win-win situation. You get more out of doing voluntary work than you put in.”
“I am amazed that I have been able to do it, and I remember each walk I have made,” Phyll added.
Phyll has been using a Rollator aid of the type made famous by Captain Sir Tom Moore.
Each walk is about one mile, and she said she has speeded up as her fitness level has steadily improved.
“It has given me a reason to get out in the morning,” she said.
She has been accompanied on her walks by many leading Salisbury citizens, including MP John Glen (Salisbury and South Wiltshire/Conservatives), Salisbury Mayor councillor Sven Hocking, former mayor John Walsh, the Very Reverend Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury, the Reverend Canon Edward Probert, Chancellor of Salisbury Cathedral, and Lord Margadale, whose estates include Fonthill, near Salisbury.
Many others came forward to walk with Phyll when they heard of her remarkable fundraising effort.

Phyll Babb pausing in front of Salisbury Cathedral Picture: Salisbury Trust for the Homeless
They have included a team from the BBC, eight self-described ‘Welliwalkers’, who walk to get well, a dentist’s wife who drove up from Blandford in Dorset, friends, neighbours, members of the University of the Third Age, and senior figures from the Bournemouth Churches Housing Association, the parent body of STFH.
“They have all been delightful company and everybody has a different story to tell,” said Phyll, who has been keeping a log of her walks.
“I have had a wide range of people and it has been lovely.”
Donors via JustGiving have included ten former pupils of Edgehill College, Bideford, in north Devon where Phyll was a teacher in the 1960s.
Gordon Pardy, head of fundraising for STFH, said: “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 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 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 – the Probation Service, Victim Support and University of the Third Age, for which she undertook senior roles at national level.
She was placed on the U3A Roll of Honour.
She first became involved with STFH in 1998 and was chairman from 2004 to 2009.
Click here or visit www.justgiving.com/page/phyll-babb-1722779310016 to donate.
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