What are we doing?

On 25 August 2018, a group of approximately 15 brave people will be embarking on a hike along the River Severn to raise funds for the beautiful Bella Plunkett.

Why are we doing it?

Well, look at that gorgeous little face!

Sadly, Bella was diagnosed with profound deafness at 5 weeks old and has bravely worn hearing aids since the age of 7 weeks. Fantastically, as she nears to the age of 1, she has been given the go-ahead to receive a bilateral cochlear implant before the end of the year by the wonderful health and support team that have helped her so far. This means she will be able to pick up speech frequencies and ultimately learn to interact and communicate using the most conventional means.

Bella's parents, Robin and Gemma, have been told by specialists that she should be age-appropriate by the time she is 4, just in time to start school. However, to make this possible, there is a demanding process that Bella must undertake to give her the best possible start in life. This process of tasks, education and equipment can be both expensive and time consuming, meaning Robin and Gemma sacrifice many hours of providing financially for their family, in replacement of ensuring Bella's development.

With your help, we would love to support Bella, Robin and Gemma on the difficult journey they are already very much embarking on.

The money we raise will go towards Bella's journey over the next few years and will hopefully alleviate a little bit of pressure from the family. This would include, but not be limited to speech therapy, sign language tuition, training to the parents to allow them to teach Bella themselves in the most effective way possible, subsidising time spent off work, transport costs resulting from the various appointments with the amazing consultants helping Bella, the various electronic aid devices for both general hearing and more advanced tuition methods, and, to be honest, to just help the family maintain a good quality of life amongst all of this.

In all of their modesty, Robin and Gemma have not once asked for help, and they maintain that their biggest appreciation of this event is the awareness we also hope to raise from it all.

What are we ACTUALLY doing?!

We will be splitting into two teams, each covering a different 50 km section of a route known as The Severn Way to hike a total of 100 km, where we will all meet in the middle for a well earned... shandy.

However, there is a catch. To raise a bit of awareness, we intend on completing the hike with our hearing impaired. We will each be spending a day walking in Bella's shoes (not literally of course, she‘s really quite small) by hiking 50 km essentially deafened. The reduction in communication dramatically increases the intensity of the challenge, and let me tell you, do these guys like to talk! Like, a lot. Too much in fact. You know, I may actually enjoy the peace for once. Wait, what am I saying? Our lives are clearly at risk and it's going to be very very tough.

Jokes aside, this is a serious cause and means the world to us. We would greatly appreciate if you could spare a bit of loose change to help Bella and her wonderful family.