THOUSANDS of Tesco employees from across the country have joined their North-East colleagues to take on the latest leg of a fundraising walk from Land’s End to John o’ Groats in aid of the supermarket's nominated charities.

Store managers and assistants laced up their walking boots as the fundraisers descended on Durham yesterday after trekking from Stockton's Tesco Extra store on their way to Chester-le-Street for Diabetes UK and the British Heart Foundation.

Six Tesco colleagues walked the same route almost 30 years ago with supermarket employees encouraged to follow in their footsteps by completing stretches of the walk from between 5k and 50k.

Stockton North MP Alex Cunningham joined the walkers in their bid to fundraise for the estimated 117,000 County Durham residents living with heart and circulatory disease and 54,000 more living with diabetes.