On my 39th birthday my wife gave me a list of 40 things to do during the year before the dreaded 4 – 0! Number 27: Complete a physical challenge; Number 28: Go away for the weekend with the lads; Number 29: Raise some money for charity. The Three Peaks was the perfect challenge. I was brought up in Zambia where my father was a missionary and played rugby twice a week so FoRR was the perfect charity. I sent an email to FoRR then had a call from Deena, which was great, and made a pledge to raise funds to cover all activities for a 12 month period! I assembled 7 good friends and family to do the challenge with me plus a dedicated driver to ferry us between the peaks in a hired minibus.
We started at 5pm on a blustery Friday night in Fort William and finished in the sunshine at the foot of Snowdon at 4.10pm on Saturday afternoon. Exhausted but elated we had completed the challenge in the time. A real team effort from the moral of the group getting us through the dark times on ScarFel Pike at 3am in the fog to my wife who prepared all the food and drink for the 9 of us! A small army! Most importantly we could not have done it without our friends, family, colleagues, clients, contractors, suppliers etc who responded to our emails and sponsored us. Facebook and Twitter were invaluable tools for raising money.
When we started the walk at 5pm we had just over half of the funds collected but as soon as we all started posting photos on Facebook of blistered heals, toiling walkers with head torches and peak top group photos the sponsorship money started coming in again. We raised the final half in 24 hours!! We directed people to a website we had set up www.bb3pc.co.uk which gave the names of all the people on the walk, information on the aims of the charity and links to the sponsorship page. After visiting the website so many people said it was such a good charity to support and it was so nice to know the money given would go directly to helping the programme in Rwanda. It was a real privilege to be part of the group and it is an experience we will all remember. We hope the funds we have raised will help FoRR continue the excellent work.
