At 4am we had stopped for a nature and sustenance break and were dismayed to find that we were still in Scotland as unfortunately the minibus was ‘speed restricted’ which meant that we still couldn’t make up any time! Was it the minibus or Oli that was speed restricted?

So we arrived at Scafell Pike after a seven hour rattle having slept intermittently and endured sudden emergency stops to avoid deers. The elite band of troops departed the minibus moaning and groaning about various aches and pains and completed our final kit check. More chocolate for me where’s my climbing poles, who’s got the talc, is that my vaseline?

C’mon boys, how hard can this be after descending Ben Nevis in the dark? Oh dear! What a wake up we had. If they named a film after Scafell Pike they could call it the 39,000 Steps! Whilst ‘Sarge’ Calway and ‘Col Sanders’ Bathard decided to race to the top just to prove that they could out pace everyone, Razor decided to rest every 10 mins and take a rather more conservative pace. When I asked why he said he thought he would have a coronary if he went any faster! Probably a fair assessment.

To be honest I have never undertaken a more physically demanding task in all my life and I think that all of the team would agree! On several occasions I questioned why I was suffering …….. especially as we seemed to follow an endless steep, uneven climb up rocky steps and loose stones and then realised that Cancer Research was our driver and somehow made the whole exercise worthwhile!

 Between us all we had our own particular stories that reminded us how important it was to raise the money for Cancer Research. Finally reaching the summit after an amazing scramble over rocks was the ultimate buzz. Wow, wow and more wows! What a view and what a feeling of achievement for the team. you can see from the photos what it meant to us.

Then for the descent! Every muscle that hurt coming up was rested whilst a whole new set decided to burn! Knees screamed in their sockets and ankles desperately tried to twist in a way that did not suit their original design. Still we had our team spirit, our cause and our pride to play for, even though crying was a preferable option as my legs became jelly with boots on. Razor took it upon himself to gallop back down shouting something about “now I’ll have to wait for you lot for a change”. Sarge and the Colonel then took up the reins until we were joined by Oli on the way down. We finally got back to the car park and fell into the minibus to head for Snowdon.

Then disaster struck. Accidents, bank holiday traffic, you name it we found it, which coupled with our delays from Thursday meant that there was no way that we could get to Snowdon in time for us to complete the task in 24 hours. Even though we had achieved respectable times for the two toughest mountains, the traffic and road works were going to get the better of us……. or were they. We had a plan. This led us to suspend Snowdon, but only temporarily as we will be going back in a few weeks to finish our work. We still have 5.5 hours in the bank and are all determined to get up and down in that time to ensure that we will still have completed the 3 Peaks in 24 hours albeit not continuously. Thanks to all of you for your support and donations and also for all the texts, calls and emails. You have no idea what a difference it makes when you are ‘hitting the wall’. We will update you all on the Snowdon date shortly. A big thanks also to my team of Oli, Glen, Paul and Mike and also to Neeley for organising the challenge…. Great work!