Oldham vicar, 60, walks 60 miles to raise £7,000 for charity

Daniel Burton has been a vicar at Oldham Parish Church for the last seven months, having moved from Salford, where he was based for 10 years.

Having been ordained back in 1989, Mr Burton has had a penchant for charity work in the Middle East for years, having worked in a children’s home in Ramallah, Palestine, for two years in the 1980s.

Now, he is a trustee of the Action around Bethlehem Children with Disability charity, or ABCD, which supports rehabilitation work for Palestinian children living in parts of the occupied Palestinian territory.

A group of five including Mr Burton, his sister Susannah, and friends Lydia Buckley, Rachel Kershaw, and Peter Wood, completed a 60-mile section of the ‘beautiful’ 124-mile long Anglesey Coastal Path, which loops the Welsh island’s coast, in order to raise money for the charity, while having fun at the same time.

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The team, which walked from Holyhead to Beaumaris over six days, has already raised more than £7,300 on its JustGiving page, with donations still open.

Mr Burton said ABCD is humanitarian and non-political, supporting clinics in refugee camps ‘in a part of the world where disability is not understood very well.’

He added: “I set my target of £6,000 because I’m 60 and I thought, well I want to raise more than £600 and I thought ‘this is a bit of a tall order really, there’s no way we’re going to get there’, but we’ve surpassed it which is amazing.”

Friends joined the core group of five at different points along the journey (Image: Daniel Burton)

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Mr Burton said he was ‘thrilled with the result’, adding: “I’m hugely grateful for all of the donations, large and small, and every pound counts, I really would genuinely like to say a massive thank you to everybody who’s supported it.

“We all know that with the cost of living crisis these are difficult times for people. I’ve only been in Oldham for seven months, so I’m relatively new to Oldham and only just getting known there, but I’ve had some great support from the parish and the community.

“The 7000 plus is a team effort, it’s not my effort because it’s everybody’s donations.”

Mr Burton added: “Palestinians often feel like forgotten people, because it’s one of the great unresolved tragedies of the world really. There’s a fundamental injustice there waiting to be righted, and goodness knows whether it ever will be.

“It’s a very sad situation, the charity likes to see it as bringing hope to people who often feel forgotten, just reminding them that they’re not forgotten.”