ALTHOUGH the pandemic has made it a difficult year for fundraising the Rotary Club of Ilkley Wharfedale has seized every opportunity to help good causes.

The club’s six female members collected hundreds of pounds for Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice with an event on Tesco's car park in Ilkley.

A rotary spokeswoman thanked everyone who had contributed on the day.

She said: "The club recognises that people have become used to the fact that cash has not been necessarily welcome during these difficult times and expectations were not high on the collection day. But, once again, local people came up trumps and £500 was collected.

"The club matched the collected sum from its reserves and at their meeting at The Riverside on 20th July a cheque for £1,000 was handed over to Andrew Wood, fundraising manager at Manorlands. Sue Ryder is the national charity and Manorlands is the local hospice one of seven across the country. There are also some neurological centres as well as some home care centres around the country.

"Around here Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice is the major provider of specialist palliative care for adults for the Ilkley area. As well as caring for people in the fourteen beds within the four walls of the hospice, care is also given to people in their own homes through the Community Nursing Team. There is also a Day Therapy Unit at the Hospice for people in the early stages of their illness.

"Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice is in Oxenhope situated on the Keighley/Hebden Bridge road. The reason it is there is because back in 1974 when people were hearing about the work that Sue Ryder was doing in the country, looking after people with cancer and other potentially terminal diseases, the Vestey family, mill owners in Oxenhope, donated their house to the cause and moved to a bungalow close by.

"Sue Ryder herself had been recruited in the war by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) where she was posted to Tunisia and then to Italy to assist in destroying enemy communications and after the war she looked after people in Poland which is why she became Baroness Ryder of Warsaw for the care that she had provided. She originally came from Leeds from a farming family. In 1959 she married Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC who created his own charity for disabled servicemen."