A pint of Banner Bitter welcomed roving reporter Chris Webber at Durham Miners' Gala on Saturday.

The Advertiser Series journalist is boosting the funds being raised to pay for a commemorative stone for miners killed in the 1909 West Stanley Burns Pit Disaster.

Although there is a memorial to all 168 of the dead, many were buried without headstones in a mass trench on land behind St Andrew's Church, Stanley.

Chris helped the fund towards the £6,000 target by walking 450 miles from Britain's oldest recorded mine, a Neolithic flint site in Sussex, to Stanley.

He completed the penultimate leg on time, on Saturday, symbolically walking into Durham on the day of the 120th Big Meeting.

Chris was greeted with a free pint by ex-miner Geoff Cutting, now landlord of The Dun Cow, the nearest pub to the Gala showfield, on the Racecourse in Durham.

The foot-sore journalist said he could not have had a better reception. "I've had a few drink at pubs on evening stops as I made my way up the country, but this was by far the best."

Chris went on to complete the trek by finishing the last eight miles to Stanley, and the St Andrew's burial site on Sunday.