A WELCOME pint of Banner Bitter was an appropriate greeting for footsore reporter Chris Webber as he reached Durham City on Miners' Gala day.

The Northern Echo journalist is raising money to help pay for a commemorative stone for miners killed in the 1909 West Stanley Burns Pit Disaster.

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

Mr Webber helped the funds to approach the £6,000 target by staging a 450-mile sponsored walk 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.

Mr Webber 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 Durham's Racecourse.

The reporter 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. The fact that it was Banner Bitter was all the more appropriate on the day of the Miners' Gala."

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

Mr Cutting, a third generation miner at Silksworth Colliery, near Sunderland, before becoming a firefighter, moved into the pub trade earlier this year at The Dun Cow, a popular watering hole of his as a customer over the years.

"It's been all hands on deck, with eight staff in, but they all volunteered, and although it's busy, you still can feel the atmosphere of the occasion," said Mr Cutting.

Read more about the Stanley Pit Memorial campaign here.