'Drambluie Rinse' from Bude, are hoping to become the first female team to take part in the Drambuie pursuit, a multi discipline event held in Scotland each year, need to stay top in the voting to secure £2,500 for Cornwall Air Ambulance.

Bridget Funnell said: "We need to plead with the readers to vote. We are still ahead but now only putting on approximately 50 votes a day while some teams are accumulating over 200 daily, we really can't hold them off for too much longer. If everybody that reads this paper voted we would be streaks ahead. It costs nothing to vote,

just visit http://www.drambuie.co.uk/teams/236">www.drambuie.co.uk/teams/236 and click 'vote' on team Drambluie Rinse.

"Come on Cornwall please help bring this money to Cornwall. It is proving totally impossible to get the team together. At least one is away on holiday and has been for the last four weeks!"

She continued: "We have a new member to our team, Ali Migliorini-Stubbs has taken Helen Penning's place. Ali is from the Morwenstow area and was standing in (or should that read knocked-in) in our video. We have been told our short video is quite amusing, shot on the coldest day of the year!

"It's worth going on to vote just to have a laugh at our video. We are the only female team ever in this challenge and have been top in the voting, out of a total of over 70 teams, for the past five weeks."

The other three members that make up the team are: Bridget Funnell, Isobel Waterhouse and Irene Thomson.

As archery is one of the nine disciplines in the Drambuie Pursuit it is one in which the team believe could have a good chance against the men.

Bridget added: "So Elm Tree Archers have taken us under their wing (or should I say branch) and due to the patience of both Annemary Davies and Colin Smithers, we are all starting to improve with this very frustrating but totally addictive sport and we are loving being part of this warm and friendly club.

"The really important thing we need to get across is we need votes, votes and more votes! We still have three weeks before the voting closes at noon on March 31."