CLOSE friends of a former town mayor who lost his battle with cancer last year are to hold a walk in his memory to raise much-needed charity funds.

Dennis Teasdale was a councillor on Guisborough Town Council and Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council for many years and had been mayor of Guisborough in 2013 and 2017, as well as mayor of Redcar and Cleveland Council in 2018. Among many of his achievements, he was a founding member of the Guisborough Town Hall Gateway Project to restore the old Guisborough Town Hall to its former glory. He was also the chairman of the Friends of Guisborough Cemetery and worked closely with both the Guisborough and District Friends of Cancer Research and the Guisborough and East Cleveland Sea Cadets.

After a long battle with cancer he died in August 2020 at the age of 73.

He was a colleague and close friend for half a century of Geoff Dodsworth and Eric Sharpe of Guisborough and, in their younger days, they would complete a return walk from the Guisborough to Commondale over the moor, a relatively strenuous uphill and down dale 11 miles, on a regular basis.

The three were planning to hold such a walk in 2020 but Covid-19 intervened and then, Mr Teasdale succumbed to the cancer that he had been battling for a number of years.

In memory of their long-standing and greatly-missed friend, Mr Dodsworth and Mr Sharpe are going to complete the walk on Friday, June 4 this year and at the same time raise some funds for Cancer Research UK and Zoe’s Place Baby Hospice, two charitable causes close to Mr Teasdale's heart.

To support the walk and the charities, donations can be made through the fundraising page at https://gofundme/7cf47935. All monies raised will be split evenly between the two charities.