MARA Soto is about to set out on another marathon charity walk a year after she trekked all the way to London.

This time she is aiming for almost twice the distance – 130 miles to Brighton Pier – and stepping up for children’s charity STEP.

She told the Advertiser: “I think bullying is something we have all gone through once in our lives and in a way we can almost feel what these kids are going through.”

So early on Friday morning she and a small band of supporters along with her daughter Cassandra, who is coming over from Sweden, will leave the Outlet Village in Swindon and head south east with the aim of reaching Brighton by Sunday evening.

She hopes to raise almost £1,000 for the charity and by Wednesday had already passed the £500-mark.

“I like to help everybody,” she said. “I’m a mum and I was talking one day with a lady on Facebook. She posted something very sad about her son being bullied.”

As she learned more about the problem of children suffering bullying, even to the extent where they took their own lives she became determined to do what she could to help tackle it.

So she made contact with Swindon 10 to 18 Project - STEP - which provides support for youngsters experiencing isolation and exclusion and offered to fund raise for it by walking to a part of the UK she had never visited before.

Friends Hayley Smith Tracy Wills Renata Prokop Steve Fleming Sabrina North David James and Jessica Dyminska will take it in turns to accompany her on the route.

The charity, formed more than 30 years ago, works to give vulnerable children social skills and confidence to manage their lives.

Already Mara, who raised hundreds of pounds for a medical fund to help fellow mum Julie Basleigh battle a brain tumour and spend more time with her children, has put in some serious training, tackling the Three Peaks Challenge last month and she is doing more than 39,000 steps a day.

The mum-of-three who hails from Cuba but is now settled in Swindon, will also be better prepared when she sets off on Friday than she was last year. “I’ve learned from my previous charity walks, she said. “ So she has bought herself some military 1000-mile socks, which promise no blisters.

She hopes to walk around 40 miles in the first day and is taking a route through the South Downs through to Chichester and then on to Brighton. Several businesses in Old Town have backed her effort but anyone else that wants to sponsor her can do so online at justgiving.com/fundraising/mara-soto