A GWENT grandfather is running his 35th, and final, marathon this year - after taking it up 20 years ago and notching up almost 1,000 miles.

Bill Bewg, 71, from Magor, will line up for the London Marathon on April 22 in his swansong race.

Mr Bewg, of Windsor Close, ran his first when he was 52 after getting drunk on his 50th birthday and agreeing to do the Cardiff half marathon with his son, which led to his first full marathon two years later when he ran a veterans race in Leek, Staffordshire.

When Mr Bewg crosses the finish line on The Mall in April, the total distance he has covered running marathons over the past 20 years will have reached 917 miles.

This is the equivalent distance of running from his Magor home to Arbroath, eastern Scotland, and back.

He will have run for a total of 140 hours - or 5.8 days. His best ever time was 3 hours, 21 minutes and five seconds, which he ran in the 1993 Polytechnic Marathon in and around London. His worst time was 4 hours and 30 minutes, which he ran at the Connemara Marathon in Ireland.

Of all the races he has run, Mr Bewg said his favourite was the Isle of Scilly marathon, which was made up of eight loops of Tresco Bay and let racers "get to know the spectators personally," he said.

Mr Bewg, grandfather to Hayley Troughton, 23, Rosa-May Bewg, nine, and Hannah Bewg, six, said he aims to finish in under four-and-a-half hours and hopes to raise £500 for Action for Children.

Although this is his last marathon, he will continue to run 10k races and half marathons, but said training for long races was becoming more of a chore, especially in winter when the weather was not on his side.

He added: "I'm looking forward to this one, I don't think I shall regret not running - the last hour is hard and the three days after are pretty grotty as well."

* OVER the past 20 years, Mr Bewg has run marathons in Boston in America, Auckland in New Zealand, La Rochelle in France, and in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, both Holland.

* To sponsor Mr Bewg, visit www.virginmoneygiving.com/BillBewg