John O’Groats Trail bridge fundraiser hits £5k target
More than £5000 has been raised towards a new bridge on the John O’Groats Trail after a mystery donor pledged to match funds donated by the public.
As reported earlier this week, trail manager Ken McElroy had learned that a mystery donor was willing to contribute up to £2500 towards a footbridge over the Loth Burn, south of Helmsdale.
The public were asked to contribute the same amount to give a total of £5000 towards the project, which is expected to cost a total of £100,000.
A further £30,000 has already been sourced through SSE funding, with more applications in the pipeline.
Mr McElroy has described the crossing of Loth Burn as one of two that the trail were keen to see completed this year – the other being the Wester Burn at Sinclair’s Bay.
After the fundraiser on the BigGive website was highlighted by the Groat online on Monday, the total leapt up from around £2600 to well over the £5000 target. The campaign closed with £5243 raised from 74 donations.
Mr McElroy said: “We’re absolutely delighted to reach this total in just three days, and so cannot thank the donors enough.
“We've still got a little bit of work to do to make up the rest of the funding for the bridge, but this really helps us to demonstrate the support for such a project and provides us with encouragement to get it done.”
