With the whole mess that is 2020 a lot of charities will be missing out as they can’t do many of their regular fundraising activities.

This is no different for my sponsors Primrose Hospice, but they decided to go ahead with their annual Santa Fun Run.

Normally, this would mean 200+ people in Santa outfits would get together and go for a mass run somewhere, but this year with social distancing in place for the pandemic, we would have to do things differently. A ‘virtual’ run where we sign up and then pick our own time and place for the weekend.

Along with my fiancé Julie (who loves Christmas so much she may well be 90% Santa’s Elf), we wanted to get involved, and so thought we’d turn the whole situation around a little, and rather than a 5 or 10km run, we went right to the other end of the spectrum: we’d get stupid suits we couldn’t run in and just go for making idiots of ourselves to get people smiling!

So, on Saturday 6th December we donned these suits:

Oh yeah! And the plan was to do a minimum of 5k but looping around the streets of Bromsgrove and including the main shopping streets for maximum exposure.

Almost as soon as we’d left our house we were passing people in the street who already had some change to drop into our tin before we got to them, and the honking horns of passing drivers (especially over the Oakalls footbridge) was fantastic to hear and really spurred us on!

We also got a great reaction walking through the High Street from children and adults alike, with a few chasing us down after having seen us.

We took an amazing £38.30 in cash donations while we were out and about, and special mentions have to go to the woman who stopped her car near Finstall and walked back to give us some money, and the Policeman who pulled over to tell us he loved the costumes (who has since tracked us down on JustGiving to donate, as he didn’t have any cash on him)!

Which reminds me, you can still throw a few quid our way on JustGiving at this link:

James Cater is fundraising for Primrose Hospice (justgiving.com)

It was touching to see the Bromsgrove community showing their appreciation for us and Primrose Hospice, and if we made you smile in these dark times with our clowning around then we’ve done our job!

But, of course we weren’t the only Santa’s out there this weekend, with several of the Primrose staff running around Sanders Park, and many others from local companies to the numerous individuals who support this great charity getting out there. We got lucky with sunny (though chilly) weather on Saturday, but others still battled their way around on a much wetter Sunday.

We love all your efforts, and hopefully we can do it again next year under more normal circumstances.

Did you spot any Santa’s around this weekend? Let me know in the comments!