A man whose wife died of skin cancer is hoping to set a world record pushing a wheelbarrow to raise cash for vital research.

Harry Townsend has already donated £23,000 to set up a laboratory and his ultimate aim is raise £1 million to go towards melanoma research.

To reach his goal, he plans to push a wheelbarrow 800 miles from one end of New Zealand's North Island to the other.

Mr Townsend, from East Grinstead, is also hoping to get 10,001 sponsors to break the world record of the largest number of sponsors for a single person for a single event.

He said: "We want to maximise support for our attempt to find a cure for melanoma. The more people that are aware and lend their help, the more chance we will have.

"It doesn't matter if they donate 5p or £5, as long as they sign my sponsor form."

The money raised will go to the Myfanwy Townsend Melanoma Research Fund, which Mr Townsend set up after his wife died from the skin cancer in 1999.

Some of the sponsorship will also go to melanoma research in New Zealand where the rate of people contracting skin cancer is one in 12 compared to one in 75 in the UK.

Mr Townsend, 67, said: "It's very important because few people realise the dangers of malignant melanoma. The rate has doubled in ten years."

Mr Townsend began raising money after his wife, Myfanwy, known as Miff to her friends, died from the disease.

He said: "She had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma about 14 years earlier but after initial treatment the disease had been in remission.

"But a form of the disease recurred in the womb, necessitating a hysterectomy and then swollen lymph nodes removed from beneath an arm were found to be infected."

She was sent to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London for a scan, which revealed the cancer had spread to her brain.

Mr Townsend said: "We were so confident that despite the prognosis she would pull through. She was so positive."

However, her condition steadily worsened.

Mr Townsend said: "She was very ill for ten days and although she came home, it was to a bed in the dining room but it was not my lovely Myfanwy that we saw struggling there."

She died with all her family and friends gathered round her.

Mr Townsend said: "It was a terrible moment. We had been married for 37 years and lived for each other. She was only 60 and we all loved her so much.

"We were all determined she should never be forgotten so we established the research fund in her name to raise money to strive to find a cure for this dreadful and increasingly prevalent disease."

For more details, log on to www.melanoma-fund.co.uk or email townsendharry@btinternet.com