Veteran, 99, raises more than £5m for NHS with garden challenge

A 99-year-old veteran who is raising funds for the NHS by walking 100 lengths of his garden has said it is "really amazing" that people have donated more than £5 million.

Captain Tom Moore is on track to complete 100 of the 25-metre laps before he turns 100 on April 30.

Mr Moore, who lives with his family in Bedfordshire, had hoped to raise £1,000 for the NHS when he started the challenge last week.

By Wednesday morning, more than 255,000 supporters had sponsored him a total of more than £5,100,000.

"I think that's absolutely enormous," Mr Moore told the BBC. "At no time when we started off with this exercise did we anticipate we'd get anything near that sort of money.

"It just shows that people have such high regard for matters of our National Health Service and it's really amazing that people have paid so much money."

Mr Moore began raising funds to thank NHS staff who treated him for a broken hip.

His daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, told the BBC that the amount raised was "beyond our wildest expectations".

When the JustGiving page went live last week they thought their £1,000 target was a "real stretch", she said.

"No words can express our gratitude to the British public for getting behind Tom, for making this into a heartfelt story," she added.

"He's a stoic Yorkshireman, he's an unruffled straight-down-the-line kind of person and has embraced this adventure as the next stage of his life.

"I believe that life is all about purpose, we all need purpose, and, whilst he's had a life full of purpose, he did fall and break his hip and became much less independent than he had been for the preceding 98 years, and what you have done, the British public, and everyone who's supported him, is giving him his next purpose.

"He is articulate, he's alive, he's doing this and I think he'll do this until everyone says 'Stop, don't do it any more'."

Mr Moore is ahead of schedule with his walking and is hoping to finish the challenge by Thursday.

Originally from Keighley in West Yorkshire, Mr Moore trained as a civil engineer before enlisting in the Army for the Second World War, rising to captain and serving in India and Burma.

His Twitter account said: "5 MILLION!

"Huge thank you to @JustGiving who had over 90,000 people on Tom's page at one time, and had to try ensure that the site didn't crash.

"WOW – just speechless."

– Donations to NHS Charities Together can be made at www.justgiving.com/fundraising/tomswalkforthenhs