My Sight Notts celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, continuing to provide emotional support, practical advice and adapted leisure opportunities that enable blind and partially sighted people to get more out of life.

Donna, Kirsty and Angela are undertaking a personal challenge to summit Ben Nevis, but with a twist.  Donna is brand new to hiking, so walking with new walking boots, rucksack and trekking poles up the UK's highest peak will be a genuine challenge.  Kirsty and Angela will be wearing blindfolds and "simspecs", plastic goggles that simulate eye conditions like glaucoma, macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and stroke-related sight loss.  Kirsty and Angela will experience a little of how it can be to be visually impaired yet still enjoy the great outdoors despite a vision disability, by taking it in turns to guide each other up and down the UK's highest mountain.

Kirsty says, "As Sports Officer at My Sight Notts, I regularly guide blind and partially sighted clients on walks, and devise workout programmes for our clients to get fit at the gym and swimming pool.  I am always the sighted guide providing support, so for Ben Nevis the tables will turn and I will get to experience what it's like to not have full sight.  This is a daunting yet exciting challenge for me."

Angela says, "I have learned the skill of guiding blind people over the last 15 years, when my mum started to lose her sight through RP, a hereditary eye condition.  Sighted guiding is second nature to me, and I love that My Sight Notts offers a Rambling Group where our volunteers guide blind clients around the Peak District, an activity that we sighted people take for granted.  Climbing Ben Nevis in this way will give me a taste of what it must be like for my mum to live life through no sight at all.  I am feeling apprehensive, but I trust Kirsty to be my eyes for this experience."