FIFTEEN tonnes of clothes left at the Great North Run starting line have been donated to charity.

Volunteers filled 700 refuse bags with discarded tops, jackets and bottoms left behind by the 57,000 runners as they set off for South Shields.

The clothes were scattered across the runners’ assembly area in Newcastle, that stretches across one mile from Claremont Road bridge to Grandstand Road bridge.

Volunteers from Making Winter Warmer and the British Heart Foundation collected the clothes, equivalent to the weight of a double decker bus, which will be distributed to the homeless in the North East or sold from the British Heart Foundation’s charity shops.

Jo Burns, of Making Winter Warmer, said: “After the Great North Run, everybody leaves a lot of clothing behind that they don’t need while they are running.

“We were delighted to be invited along by the Great North Run to collect the unwanted items, it’s an amazing opportunity for the charity.

“We store them at our base and get them washed before they are handed out to our street friends.”

Nigel Bullock, area manager at the British Heart Foundation, added: “It was great to be involved in the Great North Run in such a special way and we are very grateful for the opportunity.

“We collected around three hundred bags of discarded clothing items and I would estimate that the items combined would be worth in excess of £2,500!”

Joe Milner, assistant Start Director at the Great North Run, said: “The official charity clothing pick-up is truly a military operation with volunteers scattered across the mile-long startline.

“It was a mammoth task that took over an hour and a half but without the help of our charity partners, the clean-up would have taken a lot longer”.