Last year I was inspired by the feat of Chris Bonington who climbed one of the hardest rock climbs in the UK on his 80th birthday - a climb he had been the first to do some fifty years earlier!.  So I thought  I would have a go at something that has always been a challenge for me - Napes Needle. Of course it is very much easier than Chris's climb - but then I am a very much less gifted climber than Chris, so it is somewhat comparable.  I shall attempt the climb in June this year.

Then, when the Nepal Eartquake happened, and my climbing guide Tim Mosedale was trapped high on Everest by the avalanches caused by the earthquake, I thought that I might use my little adventure to raise funds for all the people living in Nepal who have been so terribly affected by this disaster..

In the event, Tim was too busy training for his own amazing charity event (a virtually impossible 48 hour swim, cycle and run challenge all around the Lake District in July, all to raise funds for the families of the Nepalese sherpas in his party who were killed by the Everest avalanche on April 25th) to have time to be my guide, so he asked Mike Norbury to take over. And on the 9th of June Mike succeeded in getting me safely up to the top of the Needle, with a lot of skill and encouragement (his), scrabbling and struggling (mine) and quite a bit of what he euphemistically called "rope manipulation"!.  It was an amazingly enjoyable day, as we were accompanied up to the foot of the Needle, high up on the sunny south-western slopes of Great Gable, by five of my family, including 6-year old Zeme (already a better climber than me) and two of Mike's sheep dogs.  Although I had of course originally hoped to be guided by Tim Mosedale, it turned out that I couldn't have had a better guide than Mike Norbury, who is a really nice guy, and whose competence and encouragement gave me the confidence I needed -  in fact, to my surprise, I never felt at all afraid during the climb!