On 29 October 2010 Meg didn’t die.  It wasn’t for a lack of effort (on meningitis’ part) and it was touch and go for a while (which is a memory we’ll all draw a veil over with more than a little bit of relief) but she didn’t die.

 

It was a close run thing.

 

Two and a half years later, Meg’s re-learnt how to breathe, how to talk (a lot!), how to pick up a cup of coffee and how to change the channel on the TV.  Now she’s relearning how to walk and we’ve decided she’s not doing that one on her own.

 

The only snag is, we can all walk already.  We’d already mastered across the room and down to the shops so we’ve had to up the ante.

 

For the last eighteen months we’ve all been learning how to walk.  We’ve learnt how to climb a hill, how to cross a mist-covered moor without getting lost and how to slog through a foot of snow.  We’ve taken on mud, boulders, fords, stepping stones, waist-high weeds, ice and marshland.  We’ve worked out how to clamber through kissing gates with a backpack and how to climb over stiles with poles and we’ve cracked how to keep smiling after twenty miles.

 

We think we’ve learnt to walk, so now we’re going to test it.

 

On 7 July 2013, we’re going to start a 190 mile, twelve day trek from St Bee’s on the west coast to Robin Hood’s Bay on the east, from sea to sea through the Lake District, over the Pennines and across the North York Moors.  We’re expecting awe and wonderment, aches and pains, heartache and accomplishment and blisters and bruises.  We’re expecting to love it and we’re expecting to hate it.

 

And, just like Meg, we’re hoping we don’t have to do it alone.

 

We’ve learnt to walk for a vaccine so that no-one else needs to learn to walk because there wasn’t one.  Meg’s alive but, thanks to meningitis, the last two and a half years haven’t been an easy journey.  We’re taking our own challenging route and asking for your sponsorship to help Meningitis UK because we’d like to see a vaccine that means no-one else has to walk Meg’s path again.

 

Thank you!