Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

As most of you know, my most wonderful niece, Eleanor (known to us as ‘Ells’) died in August 2010 when she fell down an unmarked mineshaft whilst on holiday.  She was only 11.

The past two and a half years have been so incredibly hard for us as a family and pretty much unbearable for my sister, Nin, and Ells’ two brothers, Ben and Sam. 

Time does not heal but has given me a strong feeling that I want to do something in tribute to the most wonderful person I have known.  Ells was such a warm, kind, funny and intuitive person – always being the first to notice if anyone, child or adult, was ‘down’ or vulnerable; always the first to make people laugh with her funny voices or wry wit; always loving being at the heart of her family and never tiring of her cousins and their adoration of her.  She truly was one of life’s ‘one-offs’ and we miss her so dreadfully.

So my tribute to Ells is to attempt to run the Paris marathon on 7 April.  Ells was a very talented runner so I think she would have approved of this rather crazy venture of her rather middle-aged aunt.  

Despite being so young Ells was a very committed feminist and, after she died, a memorial fund was set up in her name to raise money to support individual African girls through education.  It is for this charity, the Eleanor Clarke Memorial Fund (part of the Langalanga Scholarship Fund) that I hope to raise money.

So, if you would like to sponsor me then that would be great but please do not feel that you must as I know that some of you have already donated to Ells’ charity and I also know that this is ‘marathon time’ so you may be inundated with sponsorship requests.  My main reason for attempting this run is in memory of a wonderful daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece and cousin, Ells.