THE treehouse project at Holy Cross Hospital, Haslemere, has moved a step closer thanks to three of its supporters running the Grand Brighton Half Marathon.

The scheme will provide a wheelchair-accessible platform among the trees in the hospital grounds where patients can enjoy being up in a leafy canopy with a bird’s eye view of the site.

Holy Cross chief executive Dr Ross White said: “I’m enormously grateful to John Cavanagh, a colleague of one of our patients, who completed the 13.2-mile run in a very respectable two hours 12 minutes.

“Our patients are highly dependent on specialist medical care so simple pleasures like being in the countryside, enjoying sunshine, birdsong or a gentle breeze are not straightforward things for us to provide. But thanks to the generosity of people like John, we intend to build a wheelchair-accessible platform among the trees. We hope to reach our fundraising target over the next few months, so if anyone has not donated online already, please do consider us as a worthy local cause.”

Specialist physiotherapists Rosie Cramner and Manuela Maxwell,who are part of a team of seven at Holy Cross Physiotherapy Centre, also ran the half marathon.

Manuela finished in the top 15 per cent with a time of one hour 44 minutes and Rosie was among the top 40 of the 3,000 female runners, completing it in just one hour 30 minutes.

? Supporters of Holy Cross’s treehouse project have already raised around £69,000 but more is still needed. More information is available on the fundraising section of the hospital’s website.