A CAMPAIGN to purchase a floating wheelchair so that everybody can enjoy the seaside at Pwllheli is underway.

Residents are pulling together to raise £2,000 to buy the innovative device - which has floatable armrests and tyres allowing users to easily get to the water from the beach - for visitors and locals who are wheelchair dependent but still want to enjoy the waves.

Sophie Underwood kick-started the fund-raising effort last Saturday by successfully completing the Abersoch 10k for her close friend Claire Kibblewhite-Walker and her teenage son Lewis, who loves the ocean but requires a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy.

Mother-of-four Claire, who taxis special needs children in the area back and fore from school, believes the chair would be of great use to the whole community.

“The chair will be for everyone to use who is unable to get onto the beach or to the water,” she explained.

“I have a 13-year-old child in a wheelchair I’m finding it more difficult now to get him onto the beach and into the water, so one of these chairs would be very beneficial.

“My son Lewis has cerebral palsy and is unable to walk at all.”

See this week’s Arfon/Dwyfor edition of the Cambrian News for the full story