Dame Kelly received the Baton from weightlifter Dyana Altenor, an England team mate at the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games.

A double Olympic champion in athletics at Athens 2004, Dame Kelly went to school in Tonbridge and first took up athletics at the local club.

She also won 1500 metres Commonwealth gold in 1994 and 2002.

Her arrival was greeted by around 1000 local children, who had been given the morning off school for the occasion.

Holmes is now Honorary Colonel of the Royal Armoured Corps Training Regiment following her ten years of army service in the 1990s.

Another distinguished former soldier was also among the Batonbearers earlier in the week.

Major Sally Orange from Salisbury held it as she greeted the sunrise at Stonehenge.

During the pandemic, Orange ran a full marathon around the perimeter of the Nightingale Hospital in London where she worked after leaving the army.

Birmingham 2022 is set to include more Para sport than any previous Commonwealth Games, so a trip to the home of the Paralympics in Stoke Mandeville was an appropriate staging post.

Felicity Amswych from Aylesbury, a fundraiser for autism charities, carried the Baton at the stadium where children from local schools had been invited to a wheelchair basketball session.

The Relay also headed to Berkshire where it was taken on the water by wakeboarder William Handley at Taplow and along the River Thames at Maidenhead.

Lord Desborough, organiser of the 1908 Olympics and also head of the 1911 Inter Empire Sports, considered a forerunner of the Commonwealth Games, was Maidenhead Mayor in the 19th century.

Runners took it along the Thames towpath at Eton and into Alexandra Gardens in the shadow of Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II’s main residence.

In Winchester, England’s capital city in the time of King Alfred the Great, the Baton was carried by explorer and charity fundraiser Jordan Whiley whose efforts had helped endow a school in Djibouti.

The busy route of the Baton has also taken it to Aldershot and to the cradle of English cricket in Hambledon where the village team in the 18th century was considered the best team in the country.

This week it was greeted by the Broadhalfpenny Brigands.

The Baton was saluted by the Royal Marine Band Corps of Drums when it passed through Portsmouth and paid a call at HMS Victory, the flagship of Lord Horatio Nelson, British naval hero of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

It also passed the Spinnaker Tower in the town and there was also a short trip to the Isle of Wight where it was taken by Geoff Holt, the first quadraplegic sailor to make a round Britain voyage.

Seventeen-year-old Max Ross, who has raised over £50,000 ($60,000/€59,000) for the Downs Syndrome Association in Portsmouth also took the Baton in the city.

The journey across the south of England headed through Canterbury towards Dover.

Tomorrow it is scheduled to head through Gravesend to Tilbury and through Essex to Southend on Sea and then across to Luton and Hemel Hempstead.

The Baton had arrived in England on Monday (July 4) for the final three and a half weeks before it is taken to the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium on July 28.