B Block - The three peaks challenge page
Participants: Nicola Brenchley, Richard Stanton, Daniel Russell, Lisa Dickinson, Michael Seddon, David Langton, Lee Long & Mark Dunn.
Participants: Nicola Brenchley, Richard Stanton, Daniel Russell, Lisa Dickinson, Michael Seddon, David Langton, Lee Long & Mark Dunn.
The three peaks challenge · 31 July 2013
Thanks for taking the time to visit our JustGiving page. We are a team of 8 work colleagues and friends attempting to complete the three peaks challenge within 24 hours for Cancer Research UK. The challenge involves climbing the three highest mountains in the UK. Ben Nevis in Scotland. Height: 1,344m or 4,409 feet. Scafell Pike in England. Height: 978m or 3,210 feet. Snowdon in Wales. Height: 1,085m or 3,560 feet. The road based part of the challenge involves approximately 10 hours of driving over 450-500 miles. Hence a successful challenge allows us only 14 hours of blister inducing mountain hiking to complete the task within the 24 hour time limit. We think it'll be a fair fight! 7 walkers, 3 mountains,14 pairs of feet... an astute and glamourous driver? What could go wrong?!
Please dig deep and donate now. Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.
Well done team B! It was tough and the odds were somewhat stacked against us but everyone did a sterling job and really stepped up to the mark. Our thanks goes out to all the people who sponsored us for raising money for Cancer Research UK.
A quick recap of our adventure;
On Tuesday 30 July we left Liverpool in an ancient rust covered shed, sorry van, that leaked and smelled of mold and only hit 70mph going downhill. The windscreen wipers convieniently stopped working in the middle of a torrential downpour in Glen Coe in the dark in the middle of bf nowhere. After a six hour drive up to Scotland in this heap and we were sorely in need of a wee dram before crashing out in a local hostel and getting some shut eye.
The next day, Wednesday 31 July, we fortified ourselves on a full hit greasy breakfast and pleanty of coffee and were gearing up for the get go when alas, our van died in the hostel carpark in Fort William! This was not a good start. One great push from the team (literally), one set of jump leads that didn't work (more juice needed) and one AA call out later and the van had miraculously come to life. We headed for Glen Nevis visitor center down the road and the start point of the first mountain.
Team B set off in good spirts at 17.00 on the dot, scaling the heights of Ben Nevis, blissfully unaware of the nightmare unfolding below them back in the car park. 4 hours 55 minutes later we returned to discover that the van had died again! Horror. After another breakdown call out and a few more rants, our fantastic driver Mr Dunn secured us another van which we changed into in at 1am, in the driving rain and dark of a service station somewhere near Glasgow. This van was a whole year younger than the first(!) it leaked considerably less and the windscreen wipers actually worked although the 65mph speed restrictor was a bit of a blow. Bits of our kit were now flung around in complete disarray, nobody could find their lunch and everyone had started to feel a bit wrong.
Back on the road and through the night to Wasdale Head and our second mountain; Scarfell Pike, which we reached at 04.50 on Thursday 1 August. A good ten minutes of faffing around with headtorches in the half light and accidentally putting on other peoples clothes, we set off. It was a sodden and blustery 3 1/2 hour affair, traversing swollen rivers, misty hollow rocks and horrizontal rain. We made it back down to the valley in the shadow of a brooding Wast Water and after even more faffing and some getting lost in a campsite (don't ask), Dunny floored it to North Wales, taking a minor windy road detour along the way. Traffic jams, comfort break issues and serious fretting that we were running out of time, we landed at Snowdon, our final peak, with three hours to spare. In a mamoth effort from all the team we got up to the summit and ran down the Llanberis path, narrowly avoiding taking out the hoards of tourists along the way and to the finish with time to spare! Phew!
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