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The annual Heswall Christmas Pub Crawl has been cancelled after organisers said the event had grown too large for them to manage safely.
As reported by the Liverpool Echo, a statement released by the event organisers on the Heswall Pub Crawl Account on October 6 said the event will not be returning this year.
The statement said that the pub crawl, while expanding greatly each year, volunteers felt unqualified to oversee such a large gathering.
The charity event began more than a decade ago to support Mia Austin, from Bebington, who was diagnosed with locked-in syndrome in 2009. Her condition meant she couldn't speak or move, and could only communicate through her eyes. However, Mis went on to travel and even wrote a book about her experience called In The Blink of An Eye.
She sadly died in 2019 at age 29, the pub crawl continued after her passing, with donations moving to the Tim Cogley Foundation. This is a charity set up by the family of Tim Cogley, who died of a heart attack at age 34 in 2017, despite having no known underlying conditions at the time. The foundation urges young people across Merseyside and Cheshire to get cardiovascular screenings.
The pub crawl continued to grow across Heswall, raising more than £23,000 in 2024 and £34,000 in 2025.
In their statement, organisers said: "The event was originally created many years ago to support the wonderful Mia and her family. We feel incredibly privileged to have been trusted with carrying it forward for the Tim Cogley Foundation and to have watched it grow into such a huge part of the local community.
They added: "However, with that growth has come a level of responsibility that we can no longer safely and responsibly manage. We are a charity, not qualified mass-event managers, and as two volunteers, the event has simply grown beyond what we feel we can reasonably oversee."
They urged residents to continue supporting the local venues that had backed the event year after year, as well as the foundation.
