What's got 16 legs, 4 wheels, 24 hours and one ambitious target?
Er, it's us lot.
For those that don't know us, we're a group of 9 mates who met at Nottingham University in 2001. We've been through a lot together: drinking (tiny bit), studying (loads of that), Isis (no, the nightclub), getting married (not to each other) and much more. Some of us have even started families, and so what happened last year to our friends Kate and Nick, and their little boy Jake, hit particularly hard.
Jake passed away on May 28, aged 2 and a half. He had an incredibly rare mitochondrial condition called Alpers syndrome for which there is no cure, and made his and his parents' lives tougher than many of us could ever imagine. A devastating time was, however, made slightly easier by the support they got from a brilliant hospice nearby called Keech. Here, Kate and Nick explain how it helped them:
“Keech Hospice Care provided us with support as a family the moment we were hit with Jake’s devastating diagnosis. While he was relatively well we attended mums and tots groups and got to know other families also going through their own difficult situations.
"In Jake’s final days, we lived at Keech who took care of all his medical needs. This enabled us to concentrate on being his parents and not his carers. We slept in his bed, sang to him and held him as tightly as we could.
"But ultimately Keech enabled him to pass away peacefully with dignity and free of pain surrounded by his loving family.“
We'd like to help Keech help other parents like Kate and Nick, and children like Jake. Having read their story, we hope you feel the same. So here's the deal: we're going to try to climb the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales inside 24 hours and would be really grateful if you'd sponsor us. Let's be honest: you've got the easy bit. We're not mountain goats by any stretch - we'd be pleased with just one of those mountains in 24 hours - but it's not called the Three Peaks Challenge for nothing. We'll also have a cardboard cutout of our friend Mr Thomas Unwin with us, due to him living in Australia, which we hope will be better company than the real thing and may even persuade you to give Keech a bonus fiver (hint hint).
To help make life a little more bearable for children like Jake, please give what you can, no matter the amount. It will make a huge difference and will keep us motivated when we have blisters, have run out of Haribo and are horribly lost on the way down Ben Nevis.
Thank you.
Our team: Nicholas Hughes, Mike Cubitt, Carlo Giannone, Marcus Helps, David McCulloch, James Millard, Sam Munnery, Ian Patterson and Tom Unwin.
