Paddleboarder completes 300km charity challenge

Jon Callow said his fiancée's cancer diagnosis had "shaken his world"

A man from Bradford has completed a seven-day paddleboard journey across West Yorkshire, Lancashire and Greater Manchester, to raise money for charity.

Jon Callow, 32, from Thackley, West Yorkshire, was inspired to raise awareness for Cancer Research UK because his fiancee Anna Hall was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The outdoor activities instructor, who set off from Shipley on 1 April, said the time "flew by" and at no point did he want to stop his journey.

He compared it to the "long and prolonged" journey his family had been on since Ms Hall's diagnosis.

Mr Callow said his partner was diagnosed after noticing she bruised badly when their two-year-old daughter, Eira, fell on her while playing.

He said: "Our daughter was running around the bed and fell on Anna, and it bruised, but more bruised than we thought.

"So we went to the doctor, got it checked out and sure enough, they referred us and in a matter of weeks we were getting the diagnosis that it was breast cancer. It shook our world.

"I thought, I need to try and do something to raise awareness and to give back, so the long distance paddleboard challenge was born."

Ms Hall had checks for cancer after being badly bruised when the couple's daughter Eira fell on her

Mr Callow covered more than 300km (186 miles) across the canal networks that surround the Pennines, otherwise known as the Outer Pennine Ring.

He started his journey on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal at Shipley, before navigating the River Aire, the River Calder, Rochdale Canal and Bridgewater Canal, and looping back to rejoin the Leeds-Liverpool Canal back to West Yorkshire.

Ms Hall said she became addicted to tracking him online, making sure he was safe as he completed the challenge.

She said she was "immensely proud" but had not realised quite how far he was going to go on his stand-up paddleboard.

"You hear the plan, you see what he's going to do, and then it actually happened and I didn't realise the scale of it," she said.

"When I saw it, and I was watching it - oh my goodness, it's really, really far!"

'You keep going'

Mr Callow has raised £2,570 for Cancer Research UK so far.

He said: "There was no point during the challenge where I wanted to turn around or I thought enough was enough.

"Most people say this about running, you get to a point where you keep going and the pain disappears. You just become one with it.

"I suppose that is a great analogy for what we've gone through for the last year. It is long and prolonged and you keep going. You get good news and bad news but you keep going."

Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [e-mail].