A Kilgetty man has recently undertaken a four-day, 1,935-mile trip to deliver aid to Ukrainian refugees.

Simon Poole, who attended Stepaside and Greenhill Schools and played for Kilgetty AFC before leaving Pembrokeshire, age 16 to join the British Forces, now lives in Exmouth, Devon where he is the managing director of a community projects company he founded, Splash Projects.

Before that, Simon had spent 23 years in the British Forces as a parachute engineer and a senior instructor at the Royal School of Military Engineering and Joint Services Military Diving School; experience which helped equip him to start the projects arm of Splash in 2005. Since then he has worked on programmes involving hospices, respite homes, schools for children with special needs, homeless charities and remote communities in need around the globe.

Last month, spurred on by his 17-year-old daughter Megan, Simon was part of a team from Splash Projects delivering aid to refugees at the Ukraine-Romania border.

He was joined by Project Leader Darren Clarke, from Plymouth, and friend Mike Evans, from Berkshire - all ex-servicemen who have 50 years’ military experience between them.

The three men left the UK on Wednesday, March 9 and arrived in Isaccea, Romania, a few miles from the Ukraine border, on Saturday, March 12.

Once in Romania, the team was joined by Darren Edwards, a former member of the TA, and team member of Kayak4Heroes, who is paralysed from the chest down. He flew into Bucharest from his home in Shropshire.

The team stopped at a border crossing point half-way between the towns of Galati and Tulcea in Romania, where Ukrainian refugees were given food, clothes and other essential items, and buses were lined up to take them to Germany.

Pictures and letters created by children at Lympstone Primary School, Exmouth, where Megan Poole works, were given to refugee children.

The team were told the hospitals inside Ukraine needed insulin, morphine and other pain killers. On Tuesday, March 15, Mike set off for Izmail Military Hospital in Ukraine, where he unloaded a trailer full of medical supplies, but not before border officials had spent around two hours searching his vehicle for weapons.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team spent around £9,000, amassed through a Crowdfunding campaign, on essential items to give to arriving refugees.

“It’s very emotional here,” Simon reported from the border. “Around 300 to 500 people, mainly women with children and older people, arrive here every hour. Many are very tearful.

“The whole place is run by volunteers, there are people from all over the world here trying to help. People are given food and other essential items they couldn’t bring with them. They’re all being taken by bus to Germany where they’ll be taken to youth hostels and other places.”

It was a tense time for Simon’s mum, Shirley, who still lives in Kilgetty - but at least she could track his progress using an app on her phone.

“I’m very, very proud of Simon - and of my granddaughter Megan; she was the inspiration behind it, and she organised the collection at the school,” said Shirley Poole.

“Proud, yes, but also so relieved when my son had reached home.”