Over the second weekend of August this year and along with a handful of carefully selected special intrepid co-adventure seekers, I will be undertaking the UK 3 Peaks Challenge with a twist.

We will start the trip by climbing Mount Snowdon in Wales. Once down, we will jump immediately onto our bikes and cycle roughly 250 miles to Sca Fell Pike in England, which we will climb. Then - you guessed it - cycle the remaining miles to Ben Nevis in Scotland and then climb that. Details remain sketchy at this stage and not much planning has taken place (standard!), however the distances involved are around 450 miles of cycling and 12 hours of climbing what apparently (correct me if I'm wrong) equates to a third of the height of Everest. We hope to do this in under 72 hours.

My reasons for doing this are to help pay for the phyiotherapy costs for Annabelle - the daughter of a friend of mine. Annabelle has recently undergone neurosurgery in America to help her walk and now has to have daily physiotherapy to help her recover. She is currently 3 and a half years old and has never yet walked on her own. The operation has helped her enormously. More details about Annabelle's story are below.

Any help you can give us to getting to our magic figure would be hugely appreciated and it WILL make a difference to a wonderful, loving, fun little girl who deserves better than the hand she has been dealt with so far. You can help us change this!

Thank you so much!

 

Josh

Thank you for visiting Annabelle's Just Giving page. You can help her dream come true by donating as much or as little as you can afford!

Annabelle is 3 years old and was born 12 weeks' prematurely. Soon after, she was diagnosed with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy as a result of her premature birth. The biggest symptom in Annabelle is that she has a really intense tightness in the muscles in her legs (just like heavy duty elastic bands). This means that she is unable to walk unaided and suffers from regular pain as a result of her tight muscles.

She is a really bright, bubbly, loving, cuddly little girl and so very brave. She only ever gets grumbly after long, intensive periods of physio.

There is an operation that would help Annabelle walk, called selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR). This is a 5 hour neuro-surgical operation that would directly target and eliminate the nerve rootlets in Annabelle's spinal cord that cause the spasticity in her legs. The process would leave only the properly-firing nerve rootlets intact and would permanently eliminate the spasticity in her muscles.

The best place in the world for SDR is the St Louis Children's Hospital, Missouri in America. There, Dr Park has performed over 2,500 operations and his success rate is 100%. That's 100%. Amazingly, every single SDR operation he has ever performed has succeeded in improving the child's life forever. This is what we, and Annabelle, want so badly.

The price of the SDR operation is very high. Once the operation itself, aftercare, travel and accommodation costs are taken into account, we would need to have raised £55,000. This is why we really need your help!

The people at the Tree of Hope Children's Charity have so very kindly allowed us to fundraise under their banner. The Tree of Hope help fund specialist medical surgery, treatment and therapy to children in order to free them from suffering and to give them a better quality of life in their young lives. They have helped many other children raise money for SDR. With their support and your help and donations, Annabelle's dream can come true too.

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 Tree of Hope and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for The Tree of Hope and for Annabelle.

So please dig deep and donate now!

Thank you.