All change .... or how we collected 32 million pennies
It's said that if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves.
For the past 20 years Peter and Bette Pickstock have diligently applied that maxim.
And the results are astounding. They have amassed £321,860.13 in loose change - the equivalent of 32 million pennies.
Laid edge to edge, the coins would stretch for 400 miles, far enough to reach the International Space Station. Weighed together, they would tip the scales at 120 tons - the equivalent of a fully-grown blue whale. The money the Pickstocks and their friends have collected has all gone to the Cobalt Appeal Fund, a cancer charity based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
And their efforts have now been recognised by the Queen. The couple, from Shurdington, near Cheltenham, weere invited to Buckingham Palace last week to meet the Queen, Prince Philip and Zara Phillips.
Mrs Pickstock, 78, said: "We chatted to the Duke of Edinburgh and he asked what our secret to raising so much money was and wished us a Merry Christmas. It was a huge privilege and we had a wonderful time." It is 20 years since the Pickstocks started fund-raising for the charity and hit on the idea of asking people to save loose change in special plastic pots.
Mrs Pickstock said: "Peter wrote hundred of letters to organisations telling them of our plans. To start with, the money dribbled in at £5 a week. But as more and more people asked for the pots, it really took off."
She and her 84-year-old husband drove thousands of miles visiting penny collectors around the country. For years they counted all the coins by hand, delivering them to the bank in a supermarket trolley. Today the Cobalt charity, which has helped to establish a cancer care centre in Cheltenham, handles much of the collecting.
The couple are showing no signs of giving up their charity work, despite Mrs Pickstock being diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. She said: "I was treated at Cheltenham and so have received the benefits of the pennies myself."
