Cornwall taxi driver felt 'heartless' not being able to bring Ukrainian refugees home

  • Darren Tait speaks to Charlotte Gay hours after arriving back to Cornwall.

A taxi driver from Cornwall who led a convoy of nine vehicles of aid to the Polish - Ukraine border has told of his heartbreak at leaving refugees behind.

"It made us feel heartless because we could have helped people, we could have brought them back and it's left a horrible feeling", he said.

Darren Tait and a team of volunteers - many who had never met each other before - set off from St Ann's Chapel and drove more than 1,200 miles to Warsaw in Poland.

The owner of the taxi firm says people from across Devon and Cornwall have been in touch to say they will happily take in Ukrainian refugees as soon as it becomes possible.

"We've had messages on Facebook from families all over Cornwall, all over Devon saying if you can [bring refugees back] we've got rooms, we've got places for them."

Aid being unloaded at a Polish charity in Warsaw Credit: Darren's Cars

Current UK immigration rules meant Darren and the team would not have been allowed to bring families back with them, something they found especially hard when seeing refugees arrive in Poland.

"They had no expressions on the faces. They were just blank, they were just staring into space."

"Then we had to drive through them to get out of where we were and that was hard because we had probably 20 odd spaces within all the vehicles that we had and we was all left with a feeling, we wanted to do more."

Donations are still being dropped off at the taxi office, and the phone keeps ringing off with people wanting to help.

Office manager Cheryl Negus says it's particularly hard to hear the personal stories of those who have family living in Ukraine.

"I won't lie, there have been many times I've come off the phone and I'm in tears."

"When you've got people telling you the their families are sat there, they're watching things be bombed and they don't know whether they're going to speak to them the next morning."

Some of the nine fully loaded vehicles leaving crossing borders to bring aid to refugees coming to Poland Credit: Darren's Cars

After five days of travelling, the team arrived home in Cornwall in the early hours of this morning but are already planning their next trip back with an even bigger convoy on the 15 April.