A YATE mother who was widowed at the age of just 38 ago has completed a five-mile walk in the middle of the night in aid of the hospice which cared for her husband.

Pippa Howard walked past the sites of Bristol in the early hours of Sunday (July 10), along with hundreds of other supporters, for the St Peter’s Hospice Midnight Walk.

Pippa, 40, has attended a support group at the hospice every week for other young widows since her husband Stuart died in January last year.

Now a single mum to the couple’s three-year-old daughter Adelaide, Pippa and two other members of the group formed a team, the Wonder Widows, for the midnight walk.

“It was a great atmosphere,” said Pippa, of Littledean. “There were hundreds of other people and we finished in just under two hours. It was worth doing just for the sense of satisfaction to say I did that.

“We stood out a little bit in our costumes as everyone else was wearing pink T-shirts. “Bridge Valley Road was a bit of a killer, not because it is step but it’s just very long.”

Pippa, who works at John Lewis at The Mall at Cribbs Causeway, met Stuart, a self-employed carer, through the Yate and Chipping Sodbury division of St John’s Ambulance where they both volunteered and several members cheered her on at the walk.

Stuart was rushed into hospital in the ambulance he had just finished using during a shift with St John’s with profuse bleeding in 2013, when Adelaide was just three months old. He was quickly diagnosed with bowel cancer but was given good chances of recovery, however, after further tests, came the damning diagnosis that he had genetic condition Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP) and the devastated young family were told his condition was terminal in July 2014.

“There are times when I feel angry with him,” said Pippa. “I didn’t sign up to be a single parent. We were meant to grow old together.

“People say to me I know how you feel,” said Pippa, of Littledean in Yate. “I want to say to them, you tell me what qualifies you to know how on earth I feel.

“But with the group they do understand and it has helped me.”

Pippa has raised around £250 through the walk. To sponsor her go to justgiving.com/pipsmidnightwalk