NINE months after vowing to test their limits for charity, a dozen local crime investigators from Swindon spent their weekend hiking the Ridgeway.

The team has been filling their rest days with training since making the decision as a New Year resolution and took on the 85-mile challenge over the weekend - trekking 44 miles on Saturday and 41 on Sunday.

Despite losing a few team members to natural wastage, pregnancy or injury ahead of the trek, the officers from CID and the Local Crime Team aim to raise as much money as they can for two charities, the British Heart Foundation and Prospect Hospice.

One of the team, PC Carl Jones, said: “All the training we have had to do has been in our own time, so it has been difficult and we have done it all on an individual basis. There have been training programmes passed around for us to get the miles under our belts.”

The team started out at 16-strong, but have suffered some casualties along the way.

“One girl has fallen pregnant, and even though she is eight months along, she was keen to do it until we had to talk her out of it,” said Carl.

“Somebody else has changed jobs and was no longer able to commit, and another has changed posts. Another was run over by his son’s electric scooter and damaged the tendons in his leg, so he’s out of action as well.”

Carl said the causes were important to the team.

“We went with one local and one national charity. Nationally we are supporting the British Heart Foundation, because we have friends at work who have suffered from heart conditions,” he said.

“We wanted to do anything we could to help them, and the British Heart Foundation seemed the best placed to do that.

“Locally, Prospect Hospice are a fantastic organisation and I can’t even describe the impact of the work they do.”

To donate to the BHF visit www.justgiving.com/operationridgeway. To donate to Prospect Hospice, visit www.justgiving.com/operation-ridgeway.