By James Broadhurst

Last updated at 12:34, Tuesday, 31 July 2012

A group of friends grinned and bared all for a Calendar Girls-style charity fundraiser.

February: Mandy Rumsey and Rachel Clarke

Fifteen friends from the Cockermouth and Maryport area produced a calendar to help raise money for Macmillan Nurses and the Henderson Suite of West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven.

They shot the photos for the 2012 calendar in October 2011 at Broughton Craggs Hotel in Great Broughton.

They have raised now £565 for both charities from selling the calendars to friends, family and businesses.

Ella Holdsworth, 58, of Chagford Villas, Maryport, was one of the organisers of the calendar.

She said that all 15 friends knew someone who was suffering or had died because of cancer.

The group had lost two friends to cancer and wanted to do something for the Henderson Suite, where one friend was treated and the Macmillan Nurses, who had looked after them.

She said: “We have done it in memory of friends and family.

“The two charities have been absolutely gobsmacked with what we have done.

“They couldn’t believe a group of woman could raise so much for two charities.”

They sold the calendars to friends and family across the country, and two were even sent to Canada.

Lynne Clucas, 55, of Rose Lane, Cockermouth, said: “We have all been touched one way or another by cancer.

“It was nice to do something for those people.”

Mandy Rumsey, 47, of Tallentire, said: “Everybody is really proud of us.

“People have said, ‘good on you to do something like that’.”

The friends are currently working on another fund-raising project, but wouldn’t reveal what it was.

But they confirmed that their calendar project was a one-off thing.

First published at 11:27, Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk