The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Walking the bridge in aid of Coeliac UK
Six-year-old Ellie Hynds, who was diagnosed with coeliac disease when she was four, will be walking the Tay Road Bridge with her granddad, Jim Milne, to raise money for Coeliac UK.
Mum Suzy said that when she was three, Ellie would have episodes of severe stomach cramps, to the point where she was screaming in agony.
Suzy, who had been diagnosed with coeliac disease just a few years before, pushed to get her daughter tested.
She said when she was first diagnosed, she did not even know what coeliac disease was.
She said she notices it has been easier to eat gluten-free in recent years compared to when she was first diagnosed.
She said: “There’s a lot of support out there now with Coeliac UK. I see a big difference in terms of when I was first diagnosed.
“I’ve spoken to people who have been gluten-free for a long time and they said 10 years ago, you didn’t get half the things you get now. I always come back with when I went glutenfree four years ago, you didn’t get half the things you get now.
“There’s new things coming out all the time and we’ve kind of always said to Ellie, if there’s something that you want, that your friends are having, generally we can find something of a similar nature that’s gluten-free.
“It just takes a bit more work.
“Sometimes it’s not quite as easy as just going to the shops. It’s a bit more research. I do think things are progressing and manufacturers are getting lot better at labelling things as gluten-free, which makes trips to Asda a lot shorter.”
When it came to fundraising for Coeliac UK, Ellie knew she wanted to take part.
Ellie had originally planned to raise funds last year, but Covid-19 struck and plans were put on hold.
Suzy said: “We’d kind of spoken about it a few weeks ago and I asked her what did she want to do, it’s coming up again.
“She’d hummed and hawed about different things and then said I want to do something swimming.
“I said, well that’s really good but we can’t get a swimming pool just now.
“We saw my mum and dad the day we were talking about it.
“Ellie and my dad, Jim, are really close. Ellie has really missed seeing my dad. He said to her how about we walk the Tay road bridge, and I’ll do it with you. So that was it, she wanted to do that and get a day with granddad into the bargain.”
Ellie said she is incredibly excited to take on the challenge, but said the bridge was “a bit longer than I thought”.
When her mum told her she was sure she would manage, Ellie responded: “Oh I’ll manage, but it’s longer than I thought.”
You can support Ellie’s fundraising campaign at bit.ly/ellie-hynds