Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

The challenge is for me to conquer the highest mountain pass in Nepal. I’m 57 this year, moderately fit but I’ve never done a charity event before … no marathon’s, no bike rides, not even a sponsored baked beans in a bath! So I have decided to start small with this event.

The Tharong La Pass stands at just under 18,000 feet. I’ve never climbed Snowden (3,559 ft) or Ben Nevis (4,409ft) and I get nose bleeds on the top deck of a bus. But I don’t suffer from vertigo, which is just as well considering some of the bridges we have to cross (well, they call them bridges!). The entire event takes 11 days, 17 days if you include the flights and it’s not for the faint hearted. The entire Annapurna Circuit is about 300km, we won’t need to do all of that, and as you can imagine it is a bit of a climb. We won’t be roped together – which I’m glad because if someone falls over the edge I don’t want them taking me with them.

The biggest problem will be acute mountain sickness (AMS) which can develop in to high altitude pulmonary edema or high altitude cerebral edema. I’m told that hardly anyone dies doing this … reassuring. You begin to feel the effects of AMS above 8,000 feet but we’ll have an experienced support team and a doctor with us so we should be OK. If anything should go wrong, I hope people will remember that I was being brave and joking about the dangers.

Temperatures swing from 20C above to 20C below – that’s going to be a challenge especially as we’ll be in two-man tents at night and there’s no running water, no electricity, no hot water bottles at night. I was never particularly keen on camping when I was young … and approaching 60 is a poor age to get the bug. Bugs, by the way, shouldn’t be too much of a problem at this altitude but some serious inoculations are required as well as great care over what you eat – diarrhea at altitude is no joke.

While I have made light of the challenge for me, the challenge for the children we are aiming to help is anything but light. Whatever we might think of the challenges of growing up here in the UK, it is a walk in the park compared with Nepal – as my walk in their version of a park will testify

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.