News, sport and entertainment from the Bournemouth Echo and Dorset Echo.

Happy Christmas for prize-winners

From the Echo, first published Wednesday 12th Dec 2001.

CHRISTMAS came early for two Echo readers who scooped top prizes after entering our festive competitions.

Eight-year-old Maria Hedges got a Christmas treat when she found out she had won first prize in the Echo spot-the-difference bike competition.

And mother-of-one Christina Webb will have an easier time preparing for Christmas after winning a Marks and Spencer hamper.

Maria won the £150 bike after she successfully spotted all 10 differences on the snowman when she entered the competition, which was open to children from the ages of seven to 12 years old.

And she will be able to take to the road and show her friends her new mountain bike, which was donated by the Weymouth Cycle Centre in Goulds Garden Centre - helping to make this an extra special Christmas for her.

Eagle-eyed Maria, of Heathwood Road, Weymouth, is a pupil at Westhaven Junior School and she said: "I was really surprised when I found out that I had won the bike.

"I am really pleased. It is a great bike and I can't wait to try it out on the Rodwell Trail where I usually like to go cycling."

In another Echo competition Christina Webb has won a Marks and Spencer festive hamper packed full of goodies and treats.

The 41-year-old catering and bar assistant at Weymouth Pavilion occasionally enters competitions but has never won anything substantial like the hamper before.

Christina, who has a 10-year-old daughter, Amy, and lives with her partner John in Broadwey, didn't dream that she would end up being the lucky winner.

To win the hamper, she had to answer the question: Which choir were singing in Marks and Spencer on Victorian Shownight?

The answer was, of course, Chickerell Primary School.

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