A fundraiser who walked the entire UK and Irish coast in aid of the RNLI has been nominated for a Pride of Britain award.

Alex Ellis-Roswell, 25, was one of four finalists from the east of the country in the contest’s Fundraiser of the Year category after raising more than £80,000 for the sea rescue charity.

Alex, who set out on the epic 9,500-mile journey eight months after his father died, said it felt “incredible” to be in the running for the awards show, which celebrates remarkable people and achievements and is the biggest of its kind.

“It was surprising,” he said. “I remember watching Pride of Britain when I was a kid and I would never have put myself in the same kind of category as the people you see on it.”

The former Barton Court Grammar School pupil said that when he first set off on the three-and-a-half-year journey from Minnis Bay with his tent, a pair of walking shoes and the clothes on his back, he hadn’t even dreamt of raising such phenomenal sums of money.

“My target was £10,000 and I was worried,” he continued.

“When I started my journey in August 2014, it was a grieving, mournful time. It was a private journey, I just wanted to set off and walk and see what happened.

“It wasn’t until a year and a half in that people really started to pick up on it, and it became more about the lifeboats and doing something for other people.

“I saw first hand so much of what the volunteers and the charity does, and there’s so much stuff that they never could or would publicise so it was amazing that I could hand that money over to them.”

Alex, who previously lived in Canterbury, has since moved to a peninsula on the west coast of Ireland, a place he “fell in love with” while passing through during his travels.

He is now writing a book about his journey, which also saw him visit each of the UK and Ireland’s 238 RNLI stations, and in the long-term hopes to join one of the charity’s crews.

“I’ve now got this little cottage next to a pond, where you have views of the sea,” he continued.

“It’s a peninsula with about 1,000 people, so it’s a good place to focus. There’s no worries out here.”

Hannah Richards from Bexhill, who has been fundraising for a charity supporting bereaved young people after losing her brother to suicide, was chosen as the winner of the east category and will attend the Pride of Britain awards in London later this month.