Basildon Athletic Club has received a £450 donation to help buy a new minibus.

The donation came after a team manager whose husband works for Shell UK Ltd applied for a special grant from Shell Employee Action - a scheme which promotes volunteering and community involvement among employees, pensioners and their respective spouses.

Mark Stevens, manager of Shell Haven Refinery, said: "It's fantastic that so many of our people get involved with their local communities by giving up their own time to lend a helping hand and it makes good sense for Shell to support voluntary enterprise in this way.

"The benefits are reaped by everyone concerned - Shell, its staff and the wider community."

Meanwhile, some of the Basildon club's top names combined with younger talent to compete in the Southern 12-stage road relays at Milton Keynes.

Six of the legs are over 7978m and the other six over 5506m and are run alternately.

After the first longer stage, Tony Barden took the new towners to 37th with a run of 27 mins 10 secs. Then Greg Deacon improved that by one position with 18.37.

Back on the longer leg, Scott Sterling's 25.42 took them up to 26th and an 18.7 from Rob Smith improved that to 23rd.

Basildon then turned on the power with a 24.9 long leg from former London Marathon champion and Olympic star Eamonn Martin taking them up to 12th with 24.9.

Another Olympian, Rob Denmark, then produced a stage record of 16.4 to push the new towners up to sixth.

International Nick Wetheridge then ran a second equal fastest long leg - just a second slower than the best time - to improve the position to second. That standing was maintained by Danny Murphy with 18.31 but Dave Carroll dropped to fifth with 27.30.

Andy Lingard went down to seventh with 18.58 and Mark Vile to eighth with 27.50.

Young Dharam Singh covered the last leg in 20.43 to see Basildon home in an excellent ninth position out of a starting line-up of 43.

There were some outsanding team and individual performances from south Essex athletes in the schools' inter-county cross-country championships for years seven and eight children at Reigate in Surrey.

Essex cleaned up on the team honours for both age groups for the girls and also took the year eight boys' award.

Running away with it - Basildon Athletic Club's Melissa Wall captured runners-up spot in the year eight girls' event to help Essex to glory at Reigate

Picture: LUAN MARSHALL

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.