Update on 25th October 2010 -

The final offline totals have been collected and cashed up and we have raised a staggering £1670 in total which will be split down the middle at £835 for CHSF and the same forthe children's ICU. Thanks so much to everyone for your kindness. I'll be handing over the cheque in the next few weeks!

Update on 25th August 2010:

Thanks to everyone that has donated! We have smashed the target thanks to you guys and will probably have somewhere in the region of £700.00 to split between the ICU and CHSF. I will update the page once I have the final offline donations.

The trek took us 7 hours in severe weather conditions (we got warned not to go up due to 100mph gales and torrential rain; typical scottish summer weather) but thankfully we all made it to the top safely. Every step nearer the top got harder (when it was hailing and -2 degrees) but we were just focusing on the money you'd all helped us raise and that was enough to spur us on (with a bit of help from a wee dram or two at the bottom!)

I've attached some photos of the day.

Thanks again everyone - you've been brilliant!

Our son, Archie was seemingly healthy but aged three weeks, collapsed suddenly. This led to us being in a waiting room for four hours whilst the crash team worked on stabilising our baby and us being sat down to say our son was gravely ill before he was whisked off by ambulance to Intensive Care at Leeds General Infirmary.

After spending some time in ICU he was diagnosed with life threatening heart problems and a few days later had spent six and a half hours having heart surgery to repair the main problem, which was a narrow main artery (or a coarctation of the aorta to any nurses reading this).

Due to the expert care of the nurses, cardiologists and surgeon our son is now thriving and, apart from a scar and hospital visits for life, you would be hard pressed to work out that anything was ever wrong with him.

The Archie Hollies Ben Trekkers Team will be heading up the highest peak in Britain, Ben Nevis, on a mammoth 7-9 hour walk on Friday August 20th 2010.

We are hoping to raise funds to split between the Childrens Heart Surgery Fund (which provides funding to the Paediatric Specialist Heart Centre at the LGI) and Ward 2 (the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit).

£100 would raise a nebuliser to deliver medication for children with wheezing problems.

£500 would buy a portable oxygen saturation monitor (to carry out spot checks on babies & children to test oxygen levels in blood which is a big indicator of how ill a baby is)

£1000 would buy the heart unit a special type of portable heart monitor which can be attached to the babies for 24hours, used to store and analyse their heart rhythms during periods of activity and sleep/rest, giving valuable information to use in their treatment.

ANY donations will be greatly received and will go towards continuing the outstanding work that is already done by the ICU and the CHSF.

With much appreciation,

Alyx, Carl and the A team.