CARL RAISES MORE THAN £6,000 FOR SALE CHARITIES

Club fundraising partner, ultra-distance marathon man Carl Cleghorn, returned from the Sahara desert after running a 156-mile race and raised more than £6,000 for the club's benevolent fund.

Carl, 34, from Dudley Road, Sale braved temperatures of more than 50c - touching 130 Fahrenheit - during the six-day Marathon des Sables.

And the Sale Harrier finished in the top 40 per cent of runners - arriving 332^nd in a field of 849 starters in which has been called "the world's toughest footrace".

"It was a much harder physical and mental challenge than even I expected," he says. "No words can describe what it was like. With blisters on my feet and nosebleeds from the heat, dust and stinging sand, I hurt everywhere for most of the week and felt like I'd been hit by a train!"

Carl arrived back in Sale more than 20lbs lighter after the equivalent of nearly six regular marathons over shifting sand dunes and uneven rocky ground in blistering North African heat.

Then he joined Rotarians to decide what local charities and causes will receive the donations that he has paid into Sale Rotary Club's benevolent fund.

"Carl's achievement is monumental, said the then club president Malcolm Brown. "Words can't express the debt that we and the people of Sale owe to him. Because of him many deserving causes will benefit, many hardships will be eased and many dreams will come true." 

The desert run earned Carl a Paul Harris Fellowship, one of Rotary's highest awards.

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In 2012 when the Olympic 'real relay baton' passed through Greater Manchester, Carl was, of course, not far away. He wrote at the time about his "small part in history":