A Westbury fundraising team has reached the £475,000 mark for good causes through a series of metal detecting rallies.
Gary Cook, who founded the Rodney Cook Memorial Rally in 2018 in memory of his father, and his team of volunteers raised £65,000 this year by running three smaller ‘no-frills’ rallies rather than the large annual event for which they are best known.
“To be that close to half a million, it’s amazing really – a fantastic feeling,” said Gary. “When we started eight years ago, I thought we’d raise a few thousand pounds, but it spiralled from the first event. It’s quite surreal to have raised so much and I’m very proud of what we’ve all achieved.
“This year, although we took a break from the Big Rally and held three smaller ‘no frills’ events, the generosity and support from our community never wavered and we’re still donating over £65,000 to good causes including over £40,000 going to the support cancer services at the RUH in Bath.”
Gary and his team visited the RUH on Friday 14th November to hand over a cheque for £40,620.58 which Sarah Cade, Head of Medical Physics and Bioengineering at the RUH, said was “super amazing”. She said the money would go towards a new faster, higher quality PET-CT scanner that will shorten scan times, increase capacity and support more accurate cancer diagnosis.
Other amounts donated by Gary and his team are £10,000 for Countryside Learning which aims to educate and inspire children to enjoy the countryside; £9,000 for landowner-supported charities including the Air Ambulance; £5,000 to the family of two-year-old Robin Russell from Westbury who has severe cerebral palsy; and £1,500 to one of the Rally’s marshalls, Jamie Day, towards a special needs chair for his son who also has cerebral palsy.
The rallies, held over the summer at Atworth near Melksham, Cirencester and Hungerford, attracted hundreds of metal detector enthusiasts from around the world. Gary says the event’s not-for-profit nature is what sets it apart. “We’re detectorists running a rally for detectorists. People know it’s for charity, and that makes them want to support us,” he said. “We just want to give people a great time and raise money for cancer charities and other good causes.”
Among the notable finds from this year’s rallies was a Roman gold ring discovered near Melksham. “It’s extraordinary to pick something up that’s been there for nearly 2,000 years,” said Gary. “It would have belonged to someone of very high status – perhaps a landowner or Roman official.
Other finds included Celtic gold coins, Roman silver coins (denarii), brooches, a complete Roman spoon, a medieval dagger handle and other coins dating back as far as the 12th century.
Known as the ‘Glastonbury Festival of metal detecting,’ the main Rodney Cook Memorial Rally draws enthusiasts from as far as Australia, Canada and the USA and tickets typically sell out within hours of release.
Gary said the decision to hold smaller events this year was about taking a break from the workload of organising the large rally. “It takes a lot of time and effort, and we all have jobs and families too,” he said. “We decided to take a sabbatical from the big one, but we’ve still managed to donate over £65,000 this year.”
Looking ahead, Gary said the team is already planning something special for 2027 to mark the rally’s tenth anniversary. “We’ll be holding the smaller no frills rallies again next year and then we’ve got big plans for 2027 which will be ten years since we started and ten years since my dad passed away.”
Gary says the rallies will continue to support cancer care locally. “We do this to help people and families affected by cancer,” he said. “To turn something terrible into something positive – that’s what it’s all about.”
