BEAVERS, Cubs, Scouts and Adventure Scouts stayed up all night on Friday to recreate a miniature version of the Le Mans 24-hour race.

The 9th Darlington Scout Group set up 100ft of Scalextric track in Harrowgate Hill Methodist Church and spent 24 hours racing cars to raise money for the Great North Air Ambulance.

Taking turns to man the cars in hourly shifts, 40 boys aged from six to 14 managed to keep the race going from 5pm on Friday to 5pm on Saturday.

Scout leaders sustained the participants' interest by awarding prizes for the fastest lap and the highest number of laps in an hour.

Kay Lambert, chairman of the executive committee, said: "Some of the cars did burn out, but we had spares so we could keep it going.

"We might have raised £800, which will be fantastic. And we think the boys did a total of something like 40,000 laps in the 24 hours. By the end they were all extremely tired, but they were there until the end and did very well to keep it going."