Following the birth of Mike's daughter in May 2019, she was diagnosed with a cleft palate and referred to Birmingham Children's hospital and the care of Dr Khan and his team.

On the 3rd February Nancy went into hospital aged 8 months for surgery to correct her Palate. The surgery has gone well and Nancy is now back home, but will continue to receive care from Birmingham into her teenage years.

Nancy is just one of hundreds of children cared for by the Cleft department and one of thousands cared for by the hospital each year. The children's hospital do some amazing work and their care and support is second to none so after a few messages, a group of friends got together for a Christmas drink and a few ideas started being passed around the table.

Having previously organised several challenges over the past few years raising money for the MS Trust including the 3 Peaks & Welsh 3000s it was agreed that the Birmingham Children's hospital was an ideal charity to support with close links due to Nancy.

So after a few ummm's and arrrh's it was agreed that the challenge would stick to the 4 Men 3 Peaks roots of a hiking challenge but it was time to add a twist. The Welsh 3 Peaks on its own is not such a feat compared to those previously undertaken, but throwing in 150+ miles of cycling and a target time of sub 48 hours seemed to up the stakes a bit and justify an acceptable level of pain in return for financial gain (for the charity that is!).

A date has been set for the 5th of June and this year's team will actually be a bit bigger with 5 riders/ hikers and a possible 6th who is still to confirm. Regardless of numbers the name 4 Men 3 Peaks for the group has stuck and like all good/ annoying advertising keeping the name means those who we have previously extorted money from will remember us this time round (and yes we do want more!).

The group will be made up of Lucas, Mark, Nick, Ross & Mike with a support team and will start out at the foot of Snowdon at 6am on the 5th June. It will be a quick up and down followed by a 50 mile 'ish' ride to Cadir Idris for climb number 2 bringing a close to day 1. Day 2 will start and finish with some aches, pains and 100 miles of saddle time completed. Its then a few hours shut eye before starting Pen Y Fan in the early hours with the plan of being back down and completed before the 6am deadline to complete the challenge in under 48 hours.

After a year off from fundraising due to surgery on Mike's knee and to give you all time to put some money aside for us, we now have a few months to get challenge ready and get the all important logistics sorted. We will be self funding the challenge so every penny raised will be going to the charity and our hope is to reach £5,000 which works out at £1,000 a rider/hiker. The NHS as we all know are constantly under a lot of financial strain, so every penny we raise will help towards making a difference to this and supporting the ongoing care they are able to provide at such an important hospital.

You can follow our training and updates via Facebook (@4men3peaks), Instagram (4men.3peaks) & Twitter (@4men3peaks) and we will be sharing regular updates during the challenge as well.

Please help spread the word by sharing the link to our Just Giving Page and like/ follow our social media pages to help get us out there!

'At Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity, we believe there’s always more we can do for our sick kids and that’s why we will always strive to do more for our patients and families. It’s our mission to raise the vital funds needed to make a real difference to all who use our hospital.Your support empowers us to take innovative approaches to treating some of the sickest children in the UK. Your fundraising enables us to make our hospital feel just like home. Your donations are helping us to find new ways to treat and cure childhood diseases.'