THE Hospice Angels, a group of bikers who take on long distance rides to raise money for St Michael's Hospice, have returned from Orkney after discovering they were better known in the Highlands than they thought.

The team have been raising money for St Michael's Hospice since their trips out to Hereford's twin towns of Vierzon, France and Dillenburg, Germany, as well as Ledbury's twin town - Strömstad in Sweden.

This year the 10 intrepid bikers, led by Rob Edwards, undertook the 2,000 mile round trip to Kirkwall to visit a special palliative unit with the hope of adding to that tally, only to find that word of their arrival had got there before they did.

Not only were they greeted in John O'Groats by a couple that had seen them off in Hereford's High Town three days earlier, but when they reached Kirkwall, reporters from the local newspaper, The Orcadian, were waiting for them after reading of their exploits on the website of the Hereford Times.

Trip organiser Mike Pullin was taken aback by the hospitality shown to them during their stay.

"We found the Scottish people to be most generous", he said. "We were invited to take part in a quiz at the local pub, and our two teams finished first and second, as well as winning the raffle prize! On top of this the pub gave us £120 which was the takings from the quiz. As a sign of our gratitude we auctioned off our three prizes and gave the money to their own charity."

To celebrate their return, the team held a pig roast and auction in Grosmont Nave, which helped take the total raised from this trip to more than £13,000, but Mike is hoping for more.

He said: "My new target is £15,300 because that would take the total from our last four trips to £50,000, which is a fantastic figure. I am quite confident because people who couldn't make it to the auction keep stopping me in the street and giving me money.

"Also, Honda are sending us a load of things to auction, including some programmes from this year FA Cup Final. Because it's too late for us to auction them we will sell them on ebay, and those programmes are fetching around £30 each at the moment."

David Vonberg, chaplain of the hospice, added that the angels were held in high regard by everyone at St Michael's and thanked them for their efforts.