It will be nine years since I climbed Mont Blanc, my last outing to raise money for Gurkha Welfare in Nepal, so I thought it about time that I did something else.  I was also aware that, as I shall be not far short of my seventy-fifth year, I had better get on with it.

 

I am going to tackle the Pennine Way, 268 miles of hill walking from Edale, in Derbyshire, finishing at Kirk Yetholm in the Borders. The normal time to complete the route is about 19-20 days. I intend to do it in 14 days. That is the challenge.

 

Movingly concerned with my welfare my wife, Audrey did not want me to go solo. I shall, therefore, be accompanied by a younger officer, Brigadier (ret’d) Bruce Jackman OBE MC, a fellow 2^nd Goorkha and an old friend; he will be a mere seventy and recovering from a major back operation, so we shall see who carries whom.

 

The Pennine Way Challenge starts in the Peak District, goes through the Yorkshire Dales, North Pennines, Northumberland, Cheviots, and finishes in the Scottish Borders. The highest point of the trail is 3000ft, all the ascents together total 40,000ft, and 85% of the journey is across fell or moorland. The guidebooks say, ‘If attempted in a single continuous slog, the Pennine Way is tough. It requires fitness, stamina, determination, good humour and adaptability.’  We’ll see!

 

The Gurkha Welfare Trust (GWT) is a charity established in 1969 to provide a Welfare Pension for those Gurkhas who were discharged before they earned a Military Pension (i.e., 15 years service), or for their widows. The majority of these are ex-WWII veterans now in their 80s, but many others were made redundant during the various run-down phases of the Brigade of Gurkhas in the ’60s and ‘70s. There are about 10,000 Gurkhas or widows who qualify for Welfare Pensions and for whom the GWT needs to raise £4.3 million per year (£11,780 per day). In addition, the GWT provides Hardship Grants for ex-Gurkhas who suffer catastrophic loss through landslides, floods, and other disasters so common in the Himalayas.  The GWT also provides medical support for all ex-Gurkha Servicemen in Nepal, where there is no NHS, and carries out community aid projects for Gurkha villages – as does the Cairn Trust that builds, equips and maintains schools, which we also wish to support.  So all in all the GWT has to raise £10 million per year for these brave and fearless ex-Gurkhas who have helped fight our wars. A real ‘debt of honour’.

 

Bruce and I are raising money specifically to help these ex-Gurkhas and their communities in Nepal through the two Trusts. To that end 85% of the total sum raised will go to the Gurkha Welfare Trust and 15% to the Cairn Trust.

 

I hope you will feel that the devoted and heroic service that Gurkhas have given the British Crown in virtually every theatre of conflict, for nearly 200 years, amounts to a real debt of honour and justifies my writing to you.  If you would sponsor me on this septuagenarian challenge trek, the beneficiaries of your generosity will be immensely grateful – and I shall be too!

 

Thank you very much indeed.