Province launches Community Engagement Strategy
December 19, 2025
Freemasons’ team steps out for second mental health parkrun
December 20, 2025
Round-Britain walker Chris Jones has been able to add a further £500 to the total he’s raised for the MCF by talking about his two-year trek yet again – this time to members of the Earl of Yarborough Lodge in Grimsby.
Members gave him the money as a reflection of what he achieved to set the record as the individual who’s raised the most money ever for the MCF through one single endeavour.
Chris has now delivered his talk a number of times, and he says he’s enhancing it every time, and becoming more comfortable with it. It’s an engaging story, in which Chris candidly reveals the state of his mental health which led to him seeing help; how the NHS wasn’t able to do so, and how white by chance he found an online link to counselling through the MCF. That was the turning point which brought him back to being himself.
So important did that help turn out to be that he decided he would talk our entire coastline – having been talked out of walking around the world by his wife Michelle. The trek took two years, and the story that it helps him to tell is one that mixes joy with tragedy and laughter with tears.
He’s currently working on a book about this travels and the people he met, sales of which will take him comfortably beyond his ‘shoot-for-the-moon’ fundraising target of £100,000.
Also at the meeting David Gentle was presented with this 50-year certificate Past PGM Graham Ives. David succeeded Graham through the Chair of the Earl of Yarborough Lodge many years ago, and they have remained good friends as their Masonic careers have blossomed.
From left: DC Steve Dickson, Provincial Secretary Tony Miller, David Gentle, and Graham Ives.
