A 160-mile charity trek visiting every fire station in Gloucestershire had a hilly start in the Forest.

The Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service (GFRS) bed push started in Lydney on Friday morning.

It is due to finish today (Wednesday) at the Cheltenham Oncology unit.

The bed was specially made for the adventure by Cinderford-based Grail Engineering.

The first day saw the bed being pushed across the Forest from Lydney to Coleford, onto Cinderford and Newent before heading to Tewkesbury.

It was an early start for the volunteers of Lydney who set off at 6.30am.

They were joined on the first leg to Coleford by the county’s chief fire officer Andy Harmiston and they were immediately faced with a steep climb up Bream Road – although, to be fair, all the Forest firefighters faced uphill starts.

Lydney firefighter Andrew Horne said: “It’s not the best of starts but it was all in a good cause.

“We had a lot of people stopping to put money in the buckets – we’d thought at that time of the morning all we would see would be sheep and wild boar.”

They finished with a flourish on the downhill section into Coleford and arrived some 15 minutes ahead of schedule – which caught out Mayor of Coleford Cllr Nick Penny who wanted to be on hand to greet them.”

He said: “I was going to have some breakfast but I got a call saying they were ahead of schedule so I had to just leave to get down to the fire station.”

Coleford also managed to beat the two hour slot they had been allocated to get to Cinderford.

The push was the brainchild of Gloucester station manager Rob Bunting who is hoping to raise money for, and awareness of, the Focus charity which fund raises for the unit.

Writing on a JustGiving page, Rob said: “This event is about raising funds for a very worthy cause – the Gloucestershire Oncology Unit at Cheltenham General Hospital.

“Everyone that I know and work with has at some time been touched by the great work that the oncology unit do.

“When I started to talk to friends and colleagues about this idea for raising money by pushing a hospital bed around every fire station in our county, I was overwhelmed by the response and the number of people who contacted me to say they wanted to be involved because they had their own experience and story to tell of the fantastic support from the hospital staff.

“As well as hopefully raising a huge amount of money, I believe this event will bring our Organisation together with people from across the county in a way that we rarely have the opportunity to do. We talk about the Fire and Rescue Service being a big family.

“Having one combined event that will involve all of our fire stations, crews, friends, loved ones coupled with the support of the community, is a great way of sharing that GFRS family spirit.

“I am very proud to wear the uniform of GFRS and very proud of the fact that everyone has pledged to be involved in this massive task, pushing a bed over 160 miles across six days all around our beautiful county from fire station to fire station in aid of one of the most important departments in the hospital.

“Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue are committed and dedicated to protecting the people of Gloucestershire against fire but there is more than one way to save a live, which is why we are equally as passionate about fighting cancer.”

To support the firefighters, visit www.justgiving.com and search for GFRS against cancer.