Follow the expedition at @georgebrill_

An ongoing fundraising effort to celebrate the freedom to be out doing the things I thought I'd never do again, and to support those who still yet can't.

NEXT UP: The Danny Bob Round (Aug 2026)

The home-brewed concoction of too much time spent looking at maps. A big loop of the Lake District linking the 42 peaks of the Bob Graham Round and all 13 publicly accessible lakes. 200km of hiking, 70km of swimming, a rather heavy rucksack, an inflatable packraft to drag it in, and an unnervingly large number of ways in which it could all go wrong.

PAST CHALLENGES

Mountains of Freedom (Mar-Jul 2025)

2500km from Land's End to John O'Groats via the best of the UK’s mountains: the Welsh 3000s, the English 3000s, and the Scottish 4000s. The final chapter in reclaiming a life and identity lost to half a decade of debilitating Long Covid. 115 days, 70,000m, 68 portions of tinned fish, one extended bout of food poisoning (unrelated), and endless legions of nonplussed sheep. https://www.georgebrill.co.uk/end-to-end

THE CAUSE

I hope to raise money for Long Covid Support, a charity concerned with advocacy, research and support for those affected by the condition. The last 5 years have exposed me to just how many people live with disability, visible and invisible, large and small, preventing them from living the life they wish to. Closest to me have been those of the Long-Covid/CFS community—an insidious illness of suffering, loss and crippling fear that tears away the freedom to engage with the world and people around us, draining joy and capacity from every aspect of life, both physical and psychological.

No physical challenge can ever come close to the struggle of living these illnesses day-to-day; the resilience to get up and fight will never compare with the resilience to simply keep enduring when hope seems empty and to fight is to lose ground.

I walk for those who cannot. Because I was given a second chance. There exists another version of myself that didn’t make it back: a shadow of the grey half-life I might still be living. I owe it to that ghost and every other person that can no longer rise and fight. Anything less is to scorn the most precious gift of all: freedom.