Miller completes flour-carrying mountain rescue fundraiser - and urges people to avoid flocking to the hills post-lockdown

Dave Harris-Jones carried the sack from the mill basement to the upper floor 136 times or 4,352 steps – and finished off by carrying his daughter, Poppy.

In doing so, he has raised £1,170 for Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue Team.

“I did it in one hour 57 minutes,” said Dave. “It feels amazing to have raised that much. It’s way more than I had hoped for.”

His fitness levels also stood up to the test.

“I was able to fly up the stairs with a 20kg sack, at least to start with, and even after doing it 136 times I felt pretty good. It was a bit more difficult with Poppy over my shoulder!”

Dave, who is currently training to become a full team member of the mountain rescue team, is also urging people to stay away from the Northumberland hills despite the easing of coronavirus lockdown measures.

“We really need to be wary about people going into the hills,” he said. “My big worry is that we’ll get middle aged men heading up the hills after they’ve not been out for eight weeks and they could be at risk of cardiac arrest.”

“Many of my colleagues in mountain rescue are frontline NHS workers, we really need to reduce the need for our services as a team. The hills will still be there once we have given Covid the boot.”

Dave has seen flour sales soar during the pandemic although supermarkets which had seen stocks decimated are beginning to get produce back on the shelves.

“Demand is still going up, even though I keep thinking it will get back to normal,” he said.

“I would love to know how many bags of flour are actually being used as opposed to sitting in a cupboard.

“Last week I had someone asking for three 25kg bags of wholemeal flour just for her family. That would be about half a day’s output for us.

To donate, visit www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Dave-Harris-Jones

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