A family-run resin driveway business has surprised a Cumbrian primary academy with a random act of kindness.
Oltco Cumbria spent the Easter holidays working to give Eaglesfield Paddle CE Primary Academy, near Cockermouth, a brand new walkway free of charge.
Owners of the franchise Sarah and her husband John Weller and his cousin Dale Moulton, decided to carry out the good deed as part of the company’s 20th anniversary celebrations.
Sarah said: “The company has been running for 20 years now and they asked each franchise around the country if they wanted to carry out a random act of kindness.
“They explained that most of the costs would be on us, but we immediately said we wanted to do it, even though we were unsure of what we wanted to do.
“So after looking everywhere for somewhere local and trying to find something to do that would mean something to us, I ended up explaining it to our little boys, Jack, who is eight, and Harry, who is six.
“We get them involved with all aspects of the business and we explained to them what we wanted to do and asked them if they had any ideas and they both said they wanted to do something for their school.”
After meeting with the academy’s headteacher, Mrs Dawn Watson, the plan was set to transform a walkway in need of desperate TLC that led to the schools playground.
Sarah said: “We approached the headteacher and I brought Jack with me and she explained that there walkway had been needing done for ages. At first they said a little extension on it would be great, but we’ve dug it all up, doubled it in size and made it more accessible.
“Schools don’t have a lot of funding for these kind of things and it’s a walkway that gets busy in a morning with all the kids and they often come in with muddy feet because they end up walking in the grass.
“So over the Easter holidays we got to work and had the boys really involved, they’ve been helping mix resin and laying it, and it really turned it into their project.”
Sarah said the new walkway had remained a surprise for staff, pupils and parents who got to see it for the first time on their return to school after the half-term break.
She said: “The headteacher told us they were absolutely over the moon with it. It’s been really lovely to do and a proper little family effort to get it done.
“I was quite nervous to go in and see people’s reactions, but Harry was telling folk coming in that they’d laid it themselves!”
Sarah added that because they use Recycle Bound in their resin driveways – which is made using plastic waste already in circulation and stone – that the family is also planning to organise a beach litter pick.
Each square metre of Recycle Bound used is the equivalent of recycling 3,000 plastic straws, with a standard 50 square metre drive making up the equivalent of 150,000 recycled plastic straws.
