As some of you may know, I am a trustee for RSPCA Central London Branch. I became involved with the branch after we lost our lovely Tilly (who we adopted from them) and subsequently Meg, Mog, B and Queenie have all been adopted from the branch.

I'm so proud of what our branch achieves to help London's animals - we operate a 365 day a year (366 this year!) animal welfare operation with 2 animals shelters and we take in over 1,200 animals a year.  

During lockdown, I started running again and decided that I would do something to raise some money for the branch. It's taken me a while to get around to doing that thing, but here we are!  A half marathon is also a real challenge for me - running isn't something that I really love, and before this year I'd only run over 10k once in my life. 

Why £2,000?

The branch's main source of income is our 9 charity shops.  During the pandemic these shops were shut off and on for months and months at a time.  While we had some government support for furloughed staff, we had virtually no income and still had to pay our rent on all our shops plus our animal shelter - and we had to keep our operation running as best we could. 

I know it's a lot to ask for a half marathon, but this amount is £500 - 1,000 less than the weekly average income from just ONE our shops, and we lost that amount across 9 shops, for weeks and weeks on end.

Our branch is still reeling from the pandemic and subsequent cost of living crisis.  We're seeing more and more animals abandoned and neglected, so this money really will help us help more animals, so thank you for anything you can donate.