Hi! Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

Some of you may know in March this year I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, thankfully it was found early and so far things are really positive. I wanted to try and give something back to the City hospital for their amazing work and thankfully the opportunity arose to join a local cricket team who were organising this challenge, climb the 3 highest mountains in England, Scotland & Wales all within 24 hours! Our charity is the Palliative care unit (Hayward House) at the City hospital which helps people with terminal cancer . Its struggling with funding currently and hopefully with our effort and your help we can really make a difference to keep it going;

http://www.information4u.org.uk/?q=node/124

Our Challenge! - The Three Peaks!

The National Three Peaks Challenge is a mountain-endurance challenge in Great Britain in which participants attempt to climb the highest peaks of each of the island's three mainland countries; Scotland, England and Wales.

The mountains climbed, in order of elevation, are Ben Nevis 1,344 metres (4,408 ft), near Fort William in Western Scotland;  Snowdon, 1,085 metres (3,560 ft), from Llanberis in North Wales; and Scafell Pike, 978 metres (3,209 ft), typically from Wasdale in North-Western England. In all the challenge involves some 42 kilometres (26 miles) of walking and approximately 9,600 feet of ascent, with total travel between the mountains of around 765 kilometres (475 miles). The challenge will start with Ben Nevis, the highest, and the most distant.

Our aim, although its going to be brutal is to try and complete it all within 24 hours including the transportation time to travel between the mountains.

We start at the foot of Ben Nevis on Friday 8th July at 5pm, something tells me this is going to hurt! :)

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UPDATE ------------------------------------------------

The story of the challenge;

July the 7th came and after a 10.5 hour drive in a rather cramped minibus we arrived at our overnight stopover of Oban on the west coast of Scotland (a lovely little town), a couple of beers and a not so early night ensured we were mostly prepared for the big day on Friday!

 

We started at the foot of Ben Nevis at 5pm on Friday evening, it had been a beautiful day until the rain came at 4pm, waterproofs on and we started up the initial trail. 40 minutes in and I hit 'the wall', the constant ascent and rocky path were making this far more challenging than any treadmill could prepare you for, I pushed on and after another 30 minutes the track flattened out and I gained a second wind. A further 30 minutes of gentle ascent was followed by what would be another hour of steeper, rocky ascent, we were now a man down too, it was just too much for one and he headed back down. We summited Ben Nevis and were greeted by the sun breaking through, treating us to a glorious view and a well needed morale boost for the journey back down.

 

I was soon to learn that the thought of going downhill being easy was misguided, the ascent hammers your calf and thigh muscles whereas the descent takes it out of your knees and ankles, it took almost the same time to go down as come up (2h:46 up, 2h:24 down)!

 

So, back at the van for 10:10 and a weary bunch of guys boarded for the drive down to Scarfell Pike in the Lake District.

 

We arrived at Scarfell Pike at about 04:45, weary, midge bitten and without sleep but ready for the ascent that fellow walkers had complained was the hardest, talc the feet, fill up the water, new socks and were off, one guy decided he'd had enough and stayed in the minibus, a shame but I understood. We all set off and the different paces soon became apparent, I was one of the slower walkers and paired up with one of our team of a similar pace (the fast guys consisted of an ex pro footballer and postmen used to walking 12 miles a day!) It only took thirty minutes up this one to hit the wall, it really is a brutal mountain to take on, I carried on then the guy I was paired up with decided he had had enough. Were now two men down and I'm on my own, the mist was forming and the rain was pouring, there's no real clear route and my only hope was to try and tag on to another group, thankfully it didn't take long and a group of guys agreed to let me tag along, remarkably the leader of this group was a NatWest employee from London, my brain was pretty scrambled so that's the most I can remember apart from his name was Kev (If you ever read this, thank you m8, you really helped me). We made it to the peak in about 2h:30 total, 2h's back down in what I can only describe as the most mentally and physically drained state I think I've ever been. I was the last one down of our team who made it and the sight of the van in the distance with everyone waiting somehow I jogged the last couple of hundred meters. That final effort earned me the front seat and a good gulp of someone's lucozade, boots off and feet out the window, were on our way again!

 

We arrived at Snowdon at 14:45 after a nightmare journey made worse by avoiding tourists cars in the lakes on single track roads, this meant the 24h challenge was largely over for all but the three super fit guys in our team, 2h:15 to summit and descend Snowdon is a near impossible task, they jumped out the van and started jogging (I don't know how either!?) leaving the rest of us still doing the challenge to get sorted, the 4 of us set off at 3pm and soon split into two groups, our pace was slower as the guy I was walking with was having problems with his knee. We had been told by several people thought the challenge that Snowden was the easiest of the 3 but 2 hours in and it was any other word but 'easy', we were getting tired and Stan’s knee was in a bad way. Unfortunately, despite his very best efforts Stan could not continue. I asked someone coming down how long to the summit and they said 30 mins, we had to continue.  We agreed that if we could get the train back down we'd go for it so I called the Snowdon train company and they couldn't guarantee it as you have to book in advance and there was only one more train :( Despite my attempts at encouragement and the suggestion we flip a coin, his knee was shot.  I could continue on my own but it was a tough route and I didn't want to let him go back down like that on his own. I regret it now but deep down I know it was the right thing to do. We'd got so close, but it wasn't mean to be. A 2 hour descent, stumble round the car park only to discover a sign for the Pyg Track we had just attempted read "This is the most rugged and challenging of the six paths up Snowdon......" Lesson learned there to research a little better before leaving! Seems we kind of shot our selves in the foot there (or knee)! So that was it, off to the hotel for a pint and later on a curry, a great night’s sleep and a journey home on Sunday.

 

A great experience but a brutal and painful one too, would I do it again? Maybe I'm still a little too sore to comprehend all three at the moment, but there's unfinished business with Snowdon so I will be going back there some day for sure. I managed to raise over £1000 for my hospitals Cancer hospice and the guys raised a couple of thousand more too so It was worth every ache. Huge thanks to everyone who sponsored me and kept me going when it got tough, what to do next year now, were thinking Cycle from Spain to Italy??? Watch this space :)