An 87-year-old woman with breast cancer is being forced to travel more than 500 miles a week for treatment because of a lack of local services, it emerged yesterday. Muriel Buckby has to make three 175-mile round trips every week from her home in mid Wales to a radiotherapy unit in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Each journey takes her more than four hours by car, which her family fears is taking its toll on her fragile health. Mrs Buckby, a retired civil servant, said yesterday: "The journey seems never-ending and I can't wait to get home to have a cup of tea. It is too long and very tiring and on top of the treatment I'm getting it leaves me completely exhausted.

"There should be somewhere closer. No one with breast cancer should have to go on such a long journey, particularly when we are not feeling too good anyway."

Health campaigners said Mrs Buckby's case highlighted the problem of specialised cancer centres serving large catchment areas. Patients in rural areas are having to travel considerable distances several times a week, and sometimes daily, to get the treatment they need.

Mrs Buckby, a widowed mother of four, was diagnosed with breast cancer in November last year and underwent a lumpectomy. In January she was prescribed a four-month course of radiotherapy.

She lives within the 3 Counties Cancer Network, one of 34 such networks which have been set up since 1999. It covers parts of Powys, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire and its specialised radiotherapy unit is based at Cheltenham General hospital on the south-west edge of the area the network serves - and almost 90 miles from Mrs Buckby's home.

She is picked up by an NHS driver at her home near Builth Wells and driven to Cheltenham for an hour of radiotherapy three times a week. "I have to get up at 5.30am when I'm going to Cheltenham," Mrs Buckby said. "I get picked-up at about 7.30am and don't usually get home until after 1pm, and by then I'm exhausted."

Her daughter Jacquie Gavin, 62, said: "My mother is tired all the time because of the journey. To think that there are other people of that age who are also travelling that far each week is disgusting. I believe there should be a radiotherapy unit in Hereford, which would cut travelling times for people living in Wales by half."

Macmillan Cancer Relief said patients in rural areas across the country were having to travel large distances.

While Mrs Buckby does not have to fund her travel expenses, others do. Allan Lloyd, from Hereford, said he travelled 7,000 miles to take his wife to hospital in Cheltenham to receive her cancer treatment. It took 210 hours and cost £750 in petrol.

Macmillan is calling for more specialised units to be built - and in the meantime for travel expenses to be refunded. It estimates that the NHS is saving £200 a day by providing treatment as day-treatment and not as in-patient. Since cancer patients in particular have to make multiple trips for their treatment, it argues that they get penalised the most.

A review is being undertaken by the 3 Counties Cancer Network to examine the possibility of providing radiotherapy treatment in Hereford. It accepted it was not ideal for people like Mrs Buckby to have to travel so far.