Lymington Santa dash returns to give Oakhaven £10,000 boost

THE streets of Lymington became a sea of red on Sunday as hundreds of festive fundraisers put their best foot forward for Oakhaven Hospice’s annual Santa dash.

This year the hugely popular 3km event saw around 600 participants dressed in Father Christmas suits and other seasonal costumes in a bid to raise up to £10,000 in for the charity in Lower Pennington Lane.

While the fastest runners completed the 3km course in a matter of minutes, others took a more leisurely pace for the circular route which started and finished at the top of the high street.

Families, colleagues and friends got together to take part, bringing dogs in fancy dress and children on scooters as well as babies in decorated prams and pushchairs.

One runner even brought along an inflatable reindeer to ride out the course.

The event also included team entries from event sponsors John D. Wood estate agents and Ballard School in New Milton. A pre-event warm up was organised by Rob Mangles from Gym Tin who dressed as an elf for the occasion.

First across the finish line was Ted Ward (17) followed by Oscar Newbery (14) in second place and Elliott Robertson (23) who was third.

Oakhaven spokesperson Melanie Stone said: “The Santa Dash is always a really special event so we were so pleased it was still able to go ahead.

"Our participant numbers were around half the normal number and we were mindful of trying to encourage social distancing.

“Last year we were only able to do a virtual Santa dash so it was wonderful to be back even with smaller numbers. We hope that next year we can return to our pre-Covid number of participants.”

She added: “Special thanks to our main sponsors John D. Wood and our wonderful team of Oakhaven volunteers who stepped up to help with entries and road marshalling duties on the day.”