Emma Bartholomew (29), of Woodbury Avenue, is a regular at the Kinetica gym in the Taro Leisure Centre in Penns Place.

She is battling both Crohn's disease and ME, a debilitating condition that has left her bed-ridden for days at a time.

Emma visits the gym as often as she can to help her fight the illness, so when staff there heard she needed money to fund a visit to a treatment centre in Wales, they promised to help.

They have organised a sponsored row at the gym on Saturday, May 23, on Emma's behalf.

The staff at the Taro Centre will be joined by other gym instructors from Bordon and Alton, and for eight hours they will take up the challenge of rowing the length of the English Channel as many times as they can.

Emma said: "The course that I will be going on is something held in a retreat centre in Wales.

"It is not something you can get on the NHS.

"They work with you using something like cognetic behaviour therapy.

"There is an understanding that ME affects your brain, so they are trying to reroute the wiring in your brain."

Emma was first struck down by ME, a condition with no known cure, about five years ago when she was a student.

She said: "I realised something was wrong during my final year of studying Spanish at Bristol University.

"I was training for a sponsored run to raise money for a cancer charity as my father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

"Running about 10 miles every other day and training at the gym at least three times a week seemed to be really helping my Crohn's and general health.

"Then one day, at the age of 25, I couldn't get up the stairs – and that was that.

"Months of curious symptoms followed, including extreme fatigue, muscle pain, lack of focus, concentration and memory and blinding migraines.

"After about 18 months of being told I'd be better soon and other vagaries, I was finally diagnosed with ME."

She was referred to the Taro Centre by her GP and found that keeping fit helped her cope.

One day while exercising at the gym she learned that manager Mike Godley also lives with the condition.

Mike told Emma about a psychological treatment course he had been on in Wales which had helped him tremendously.

She said: "Mike has the condition as well and he found out that I had it.

"We started talking about it and supporting each other and he went off on this course and came back a different person.

"He has done incredibly well since he came back and has been full of the joys of spring."

Emma hopes the fundraising event will raise the profile of ME in Petersfield, and if enough money is raised she has ambitions of setting up a support group for the town.

"Any money that we have got left we are going to be spending on setting up an ME support group in the Taro Centre," Emma said.