A WOMAN whose husband died from motor neurone disease has returned from a climb on Mont Blanc which enabled her to raise £2,000 for the charity that carries out research and helps looks after sufferers.

A WOMAN whose husband died from motor neurone disease has returned from a climb on Mont Blanc which enabled her to raise £2,000 for the charity that carries out research and helps looks after sufferers.

Marian Devereux, 60, of Ipswich, wrote a booklet earlier this year about how her late husband coped with the progressive disease.

Now she has returned after a successful sponsored climb on Mont Blanc, among a party of 35 people.

“We covered 45 miles in three days over steep and very difficult terrain. It was the hardest, most amazing thing I've ever done in my life,” she said.

The money raised would go towards the cost of continuing research into a disease which gradually robs victims of the use of muscles, making them unable to walk, talk or even feed themselves.

A former nursery nurse who has three children and seven grandchildren, she looked after her husband, Mick, for six years up until his death at the age of 58. The couple had been married for 39 years.

Mrs Devereux said that her husband and herself had tried to remain positive and she had later written her account of the “devastating” experience, Look Back in Love, as a tribute to him.

Motor neurone disease covers a group of related diseases affecting the motor neurones in the brain and spinal cord.

Motor neurones are the nerve cells along which the brain sends instructions to muscles in the form of electrical impulses.