Five years have passed since my mum, Bernadette passed away after suffering with Motor Neurone Disease. It's been a difficult year, but I wanted to do something to mark the occasion by doing something different. Myself and a few friends will be climbing the Yorkshire Three Peaks on the 22nd August. This will hopefully lead to doing the National Three Peaks, but I'm being sensible for once and building up to that!

As a family, this disease touched our hearts again this year, so the walk will also be in memory of my great-uncle, William Pinkney.

The three peaks we will be climbing are Pen Y Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough and the total trip consists of 5200 ft of ascent. If you would like to join us on the climb, please just get in touch! 

With MND, messages from the motor neurones gradually stop reaching the muscles. This leads the muscles to weaken, stiffen and waste. MND can affect how you walk, talk, eat, drink and breathe. Some people also experience changes to their thinking and behaviour. However, MND affects everyone differently. Not all symptoms will affect everyone, or in the same order. Symptoms also progress at varying speeds, which makes the course of the disease difficult to predict.

MND is life-shortening and there is no cure. Although the disease will progress, symptoms can be managed to help achieve the best possible quality of life.

It can affect adults of any age, but is more likely to affect people over 50.

There is a 1 in 300 risk of being diagnosed with MND. In other words, if you have 10,000 people in a stadium, 33 of them will get MND at some point across a normal lifespan.

However, the prevalence of a disease is the number of people currently living with that condition. As the progression of MND can be rapid, fewer people are living with this disease than you might expect with a 1 in 300 risk. This means the prevalence is low, with up to 5,000 people living with MND in the UK at any one time. This is why MND is not seen as a common disease.

To read more about the disease, please visit the association website - https://www.mndassociation.org

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.