I experienced mixed feelings of shock, disbelief and excitement when I discovered I had a ballot place in the London Marathon! How the heck was I going to run a marathon?! It's a very long way! However one thing I was very certain of. I was not going to waste such a fantastic opportunity of raising money for charity. And the charity had to be Central Beacons Mountain Rescue. This is why - 

In August 2017 we were enjoying the last day of our family holiday in South Wales. Earlier in the week we had walked up Pen Y Fan and thought another walk would be a great way to round off our holiday in Wales. We decided on the Brecon Beacons waterfall walk and set off looking forward to visiting all four waterfalls. I was particularly excited about showing our children the last waterfall because I knew how much they would love walking behind its cascade. Unfortunately, we never made it to this waterfall. 

At the third waterfall, my son lost his footing on the path directly above the waterfall and fell a considerable distance. We rushed to be with him and quickly realised he had sustained a bad injury to his leg, and feared possibly more serious injuries as well. Thankfully a group of walkers came to our aid. Some stayed to help me keep him as comfortable as possible, and most importantly conscious. There was no mobile signal so a couple scrambled up to call emergency services.

It was such a relief when we heard a helicopter and as if by magic the mountain rescue team arrived on foot. Our son was winched out by the Maritime and Coastguard helicopter with amazing skill. He was then flown to Morriston Hospital in under 10 minutes.  

After being assssed in the A&E department we were told our son had a badly broken leg and a small chip out of his collar bone. Bearing in mind the distance he fell he was considerably fortunate not to have suffered life long injuries. 

In all we received help from Mountain Rescue, Maritime and Coastguard Agency Helicopter, Wales Air Ambulance, Wales Ambulance Service, and Dyfed Powys Police. We will be forever indebted to these agencies.

Central Beacons Mountain Rescue is made up of volunteers, on-call 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The volunteers give up their time to help those who need them. Despite being an integral part of the emergency services they are not funded by the government. They rely 100% on donations and fundraising.

Please donate whatever you can. Thank you.

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