A FAMILY from Breconshire struck four times by a fatal disease is fighting to raise awareness of the condition.

Former Brecon resident and mother of three Gillian Tilcock is one of several family members seeking to highlight the work of the Motor Neurone Disease Association (MNDA), the only national charity in England, Wales and Northern Ireland focused on the incurable and rapidly progressive, neurodegenerative condition.

Forty years ago, Gillian's mum Rose Abberley, from Three Cocks, near Hay-on-Wye, succumbed to MND followed 20 years later by Gillian's sister Cynthia Thomas, a married mother of four, from Llanwdr, near Llandovery. In October 2012, both Gillian's brother Robert Abberley, from Three Cocks, and her sister Joyce Evans, a mother of five, from Townhill, Swansea also died from MND.

Now living in Restabal in the Lerchrin Vallety, in Spain, with her husband Brian, a former soldier based at Dering Lines, Brecon, who she met while working as a waitress at the town's Castle Hotel in 1971, 58-year-old Gillian will be attempting to raise £5,000 for MNDA by completing the 95 mile linear trek across the Brecon Beacons.

She will be accompanied on the walk, which she hopes to complete in five days, from May 26-30 by her eldest daughter Teresa Green, a full time reserve soldier in the British Army's Adjutant General Corps and Teresa's colleague Joanne Taylor, both of whom are based at Chilwell Garrison, Nottinghamshire. Providing back-up to the trio on the arduous trek will be Gillian's husband and their grandson, Harry.

For more see this week's Brecon & Radnor Express - available now.