Christine Flack
ELCC & Emery Little are entering the 24 Peaks Challenge!
Fundraising for YOUTH ADVENTURE TRUST
Story
As we were allocated the team name Snow White, the 7 walkers had to be the 7 dwarfs. We set off at 5am on Saturday with head torches singing our team song "Hi Ho, hi ho, it’s up the mountains we go". The weather conditions were extremely testing & would only worsen. Visibility was so bad throughout the day it is questionable whether we would have made it without our star navigators Happy and Dopey (Pete and Derek). All the different walking teams were given cartoon names by the organisers . A team that really struggled on navigation, but brought a smile to fatigued bodies led to the often heard call over the team radios of ‘Scooby Doo …..where are you?’
The challenging nature of the first day route in normal conditions, but combined with the weather and poor visibility, meant that a very large percentage of walkers made their way off the mountains early. We were very proud to be 1 of only 4 teams out of 14 that managed to complete the first day with all 7 of the team still standing [just]. Having departed at 5am with head torches we returned at 10pm again with head torches [ yes 17 hours & wet through!].
Due to injuries incurred during the first day only 4 of the team set out on Sunday, again at 5am fortunately in slightly better weather conditions than on the Saturday. Without injured team members, Snow White made better time on day 2 and as we have said, completed the challenge in a combined 26 hours 8 minutes.
When we were feeling pain and wondering in such foul weather conditions what we were doing the sponsorship for, the Mitchemp Trust was what kept us going. This really is a fabulous charity that provides opportunities for children far less privileged than the majority of the population . To date we have exceeded the target of £4,000 that we had originally set ourselves to raise for this challenge. We thank everyone for their fantastic support. The event as a whole ,as at Sunday evening, had raised approximately £73,000. If anyone was planning to sponsor us but either ,wanted to see that we did complete the challenge ,or, had just been too busy to get around to it, it is not too late! You can either donate on-line, or, alternatively by forwarding a cheque made payable to ‘The Mitchemp Trust’ to Alfie Mullan at our office address.
Once again thank you to everyone for your tremendous support!
The Seven Dwarfs
(Happy – Pete, Dopey – Derek, Doc – Julia, Bashful – Chrissiey, Grumpy – James, Sleepy – Alfie and Sneezy – Andy) plus Snow White (Driver David)