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For those of you who know me, I am passionate about the outdoors, and some would say obsessed about walking and all things wild.

When the Sage Foundation asked their business partners, including Five Go Live about interest in doing the National 3-peaks challenge, I jumped at the chance. They are generously paying for the transport between the mountains and accommodation in Fort William with an expectation that we raise money for charity. I am funding the travel to and from the pickup /drop-off points in Glasgow and Manchester.

For those of you who don’t know what the National 3-Peaks challenge is, its climbing up Ben Nevis (1,344m), Scafell Pike (978m) and Snowdon (1085m) with a combined ascent of 3000m and 24-26 miles of walking in 24 hours. Driving time is fixed at 10 hours so if delays occur due to traffic its capped at 10 hours.

So why Diabetes UK.

In 2017 I started experiencing a very odd set of symptoms and as they became more frequent went to see my GP. He was somewhat baffled and ordered a set of blood tests covering almost every test known to man. The suspicion in my mind was some form of Cancer that had spread across my whole body. Within 2 days I was called by the GP, who wanted to waste no time to advise that I had type-II diabetes and my HBA1c levels were through the roof. He apologised for not realising the diagnosis from the symptoms, as in his words, I was not a typical candidate for diabetes, if such a profile really exists. I think he was someone surprised by my reaction, it was one of relief rather than shock, probably because I feared the worst.

So, in comes the walking, I always enjoyed a good walk, but I’ve taken this to another level.

The diet options to control your blood sugar can also be quite restrictive, although there are very good low carb, low sugar options available, however if you have a big appetite like me, they can be difficult.

Since my diagnoses, I’ve taken walking to another level and learnt way more about diabetes and the health benefits of walking.

Not only does walking (or any sustained exercise) help control blood sugar it has massive benefits to your mental health and completely takes away any mental stress you are feeling from the day to day life challenges we all face. It also offers you personal challenges to achieve things you never thought you could achieve.

I started with a 1000 mile a year challenge, run by Live For the Outdoors and Country Walking magazine, but when I had managed to do this for 4 years in a row I upped it to 2000 miles a year. The message here is that with every challenge that’s personal to you, there is always a bigger challenge, It doesn’t have to be massive to start with. You can start at 500 miles a year for example.

Given what I now know about Diabetes, I wonder how many people a year actually die as a direct result of undiagnosed diabetes, that can cause strokes, heart attacks as well as the well known results such as limb loss and blindness. I’ve seen it referred to as the silent killer. How much is Diabetes actually costing our NHS in dealing with its results, when prevention and early diagnosis are so easy.

I have been lucky and the Diabetes support from the Berkshire NHS services seems to be fantastic.

The work and research Diabetes UK does to assist in the search for effective treatments is invaluable, as is their website in helping people manage their condition, but these things are only useful if you know you have diabetes, and I think there are huge numbers of people out there who probably don’t realise they have the condition, even in its early stages, so this challenge is for all of those people. If you are regularly going for a wee, once or twice in the night, get blurred vision, or dizzy spells, don’t just think it’s an age thing, or get a test for prostate cancer (for the males reading this), or check your blood pressure, get an HBA1c test. It may not be early signs of diabetes but if it is, you can do something about it.