A £20,000 donation from a Lake District charity has given a woman the chance to walk again.

The money from the Association for the Independence of Disabled People (AID), which operates out of Windermere, enabled Lucy Dodd to get the £80,000 she needed for a Rewalk Personal 6.0 - a robotic exoskeleton which provides hip and knee motion to people with spinal cord injuries.

Miss Dodd, of Aldershot, was diagnosed with an Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM) aged 18, while studying for a degree in English Language at Lancaster University. An AVM is a tangle of abnormal blood vessels; in Miss Dodd's case, these were on her spinal cord. After a series of operations, the AVM was removed, but she was paralysed from the waist down on her left side.

"It was just a state of shock, because I didn't really know what that meant... I had just embarked on this new independence at Lancaster, making new friends, and it all just came crashing down around me really," she said.

MORE TOP STORIES:

She first came across the Rewalk in 2012, when Claire Lomas made the news for completing the London Marathon in the mechanical exoskeleton. Five years later Miss Dodd was offered the chance to try one out herself and, for the first time since her paralysis, she was able to stand up and look her loved ones in the eye.

"I didn't really know what to expect," she said. "I'd gone to the training session with my family and friends, and it was quite overwhelming."

In May 2018, she decided to set up a crowdfunding campaign - under the title 'Lucy's Legs' - to get the £80,000 she needed for a Rewalk of her own. There were bake sales, a charity auction, and even an abseil down the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.

AID, a charity dedicated to promoting the needs of disabled people, then contacted her and made the single biggest donation to the cause, enabling Miss Dodd to reach her £80,000 target in just 10 months.

On Thursday she had her first training session with her very own Rewalk Personal 6.0.

"I have been blown away by people's support and generosity, and I'm hugely grateful to have this opportunity," she said.

"This is the start of a new and exciting chapter for me."

AID was set up in 2014 by Paul Adorian and his wife Ruth, who has Motor Neurone Disease. Mr Adorian said: "I think Lucy's quite delightful, a very outgoing personality, and someone who really deserves to be mobile.

"Instead of sitting back and doing nothing and being miserable, she's gone out and set up a website and raised huge sums of money herself to try and do something about it," he added.

For more information and to donate visit www.disabledday.org or call Paul Adorian on 01539448459.