Simon retired from medical practice last year after 33 years as a partner at Lunesdale Surgery -  and Pauline felt we needed a new challenge...so we are attempting to climb Kilimanjaro via the Northern Circuit. 

Originally planned for 2021 but unfortunately Covid travel restrictions to Tanzania meant we had to postpone - so we now aim to summit on 10.9.22.

All donations will go to CRMI Children of Hope. ( We are of course covering all our own costs) 

We intend to use everything that we raise to establish an educational fund which will be used to enable young Ugandans to obtain qualifications in health care - bringing transformation to their communities.

We first went to Uganda with CRMI Children of Hope in 2010 and have been involved in healthcare for our sponsored families ever since. It has been a huge privilege to see the changes that the Ugandan people have been able to make in this time with the charity's support.

We currently fund around 400 kids schooling via our child sponsorship programme. Once they leave school several of the more able want to go on to higher education - including health care. 

The WHO recommends a doctor to patient ratio of at least 1 doc per 1,000 - Uganda has 1 per 25,000! It costs just £3000 to train a nurse in Uganda - and £5000 to train a doctor,  Compared to the UK this is peanuts but for our sponsored kids - who are mostly HIV orphans - it’s an impossible amount of money. 

So with the Kili climb we aim to raise £10,000 - enough to train more than 3 nurses or 2 doctors. 

A little goes a very long way in Uganda - at £1000 per year, a day of further education costs only about £5. 

We will be using Summit Expeditions and Nomadic Experience (https://www.nomadicexperience.com/) to lead our attempt.              

We are grateful to GR&RD Taylor, Kirkby Lonsdale for supplying some of our equipment including our essential comfortable boots.

For more on CRMI Children of Hope see - https://childrenofhope.org.uk/

Huge thank you to all who have supported us so far - not long to go now until we are hopefully at 19,341feet / 5895m on the roof of Africa.