A blind woman from Tavistock has won a prize in a sponsored team race for raising more than £1,000 for a charity supporting visually impaired people.

Beatrice Love, her husband Jahred and teammate Aimee Pike travelled as far as they could in a day using only public transport in the challenge Race Across Devon.

The race included challenges designed to show how visually impaired people can make the most of exploring the county, with a little help from sighted people.

It also illustrated to the sighted team members the practical difficulties of travelling with limited sight

Organised by charity Devon In Sight, which supports visually impaired people, it also raised funds for the charity.

Beatrice said: “It was a very tiring event on a very hot day. But it was exhilarating and spread the word about Devon In Sight because we wore hi-vis jackets with the charity’s name and many scanned our QR codes to donate to the charity.

“We also had fun working as a team, Jahred is used to guiding me and we worked smoothly together as if in one body, covering the various modes of transport. I’m also very good as chatting and convincing people we met on the way to donate. Aimee was also as competitive as me and was good on the digital tech side to work out our route.

“We were the last team home to the start/finish on Exeter Cathedral Green where all the teams cheered us in and threw very welcome cold water over us. We were only about one minute late, after running from the train station. We’d have lost points if we’d been any later and even risked disqualification if we were 45 minutes late.”

The challenges covered travelling by bus, foot, train and water, visiting some named landmarks and a sighted member, wearing sight-restricted simulation glasses, eating a cream tea.

Beatrice’s ‘Sightseers’ team did not cover the most miles, but did raise the most money of the nine teams, raising £1,160 out of the £5,000 of all the teams combined. They were presented with a trophy to reward this achievement from the Lord Mayor of Exeter Gemma Rolstone and Devon in Sight CEO Richard Pike.

Beatrice’s experience on public transport did not fill her with optimism about using public transport in the future, having encountered many barriers to visually impaired or otherwise disabled travellers on the race.

She said: “The race gave me a taste of public transport which was not a favourable impression. I’m also used to being chauffeured all over the place by Jahred, so it came as a shock at how difficult and sometimes terrifying it can be to do the most basic things to travel by train. I expected it to be harder on local trains and stations, but not mainline. There’s no way I could pay at the barriers for a ticket being blind and Jahred said it was hard enough for him with good eyesight.

“I spent some time pinned against the wall not knowing how near I was to the platform edge and there were no disability toilets on some trains.”