THREE siblings from Spreyton have raised more than £1,700 to help fund urgent UK Covid-19 vaccine development —­ by running the distance that separates them from their granny in Hampshire.

Rose, Gryffin and Bryn Gordon Clark, aged 12, 10 and four, are going for a run each day in the field beside their house. They expect to be half way towards their 143-mile target by Monday, three weeks into the challenge.

Mum Laura said: ‘They go out every day, sometimes twice, to get the mileage under their belt. Even Bryn is doing between a quarter and half a mile at a time. He is so competitive with his older siblings it is not difficult to get him out at all!’

The children’s ‘run for granny’ is raising funds for the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford where human trials of a vaccine being developed by Professor Sarah Gilbert started on Thursday last week (April 23).

‘With a vaccine, they could safely see their grandparents,’ said Laura. ‘All of them are over the age of 80 and without a vaccine being developed it is going to be an extraordinary length of time before the children will be able to see them again.

‘The Jenner Institute say that with more funds they can speed the process up. They only started work in January and it is extraordinary how quickly they are working.’