A 75-year-old from Shepway has raised more than £10,000 in memory of his late wife after completing a daredevil bungee jump.

Plucky Ray Taylor plunged 120 metres – twice the height of Nelson’s Column – from a bridge at Victoria Falls in southern Africa in a bid to earn money for the Heart of Kent Hospice.

The charity, in Hall Road, Aylesford, cared for Mary, his beloved wife of 49 years, for the final three months of her life.

Scroll down for video

She died there in 2014, following a devastating stroke.

Now Mr Taylor has passed his fundraising target of £10,000, and is organising a night at his local, The Wheatsheaf in Loose Road, where he will hand the cheque over in January.

He said: “As I was listening to the countdown, I could hear Mary say ‘I’ll look after you’. When I opened my eyes it just looked like I was going to hit the rocks, but it was an amazing feeling.

“The bridge is also on the border so when I jumped off I was in Zambia but when I came back up I was in Zimbabwe.

“When I was hanging there I put my arms out, and said ‘Mary, I did it’.

“Everything was fabulous and the guys who looked after me were magic. I did hear my back go ‘crack’ on the second bounce but the doctor gave me an injection and it seems to be ok.”

The fundraising page is set to close by the end of November and all money raised will go to the hospice as Mr Taylor self-funded the trip itself.

He added: “When we set the target I thought ‘well I won’t get anywhere near that’ so I can’t believe we’ve reached it. But it’s not about me. I’m just the idiot who threw himself off that bridge.

"It is about Mary and it is about the hospice and they couldn’t survive without people doing these kind of things. If they asked me to do it again I would.”

To donate click here