Do they know it’s Christmas…….

I bet you’re now humming away to yourself right now (and shame on you if it’s the 2004 version)!

For many children Christmas can be a time of devastating loneliness, shame and despair.

Without the Kids Company’s support many children won’t receive simple acts of kindness like a hug, a present or a hot meal. Every year the Kids Company honours the trust children place in them by holding a huge party so that all their children can feel the joy of being a child at Christmas. 

Sadly, this year the need is greater than ever. This Christmas day The Kids Company is preparing to welcome over 3500 children and young people, as well as over 200 volunteers. They also expect to support a further 3500 in the community with desperately needed food and gift parcels. 

On Christmas day at Kids Company children will enjoy hot food, individually wrapped presents, storytelling, fun and games. They can make hats and puppets, create a Christmas mural or join in fun activities such as football and a bouncy castle! Volunteers work tirelessly with the Kids Company arts team to make a magical Christmas wonderland. 

Through children’s laughter we experience the potency of kindness.  Please, show you care and take 5 minutes to donate a couple of pounds and help make this a Christmas to Remember for vulnerable children who would otherwise feel abandoned. 

What it means to me…….

Between my training schedule and the trek arrangements it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that as well as trying to climb a couple of mountains I am also trying to raise £3,000 for the Kids Company.

I’ve always believed that in many ways I would find the fundraising harder than the mountains and between Christmas and the global economy it’s proving harder than ever!

I know what it’s like.

I’ve been there, sitting at my computer, minding my own business, when the email comes through:

“So and so is having their toenails pulled out for charity, PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY”

Once I’d remembered who so and so was I’d make a mental note to sponsor them.

Then a couple of weeks later I’d be sitting at my computer, minding my own business when:

“So and so is STILL having their toenails pulled out for charity, PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY”

After thinking “Crikey, that’s taking a while”, I’d make another mental note to sponsor them.

And this would continue on a regular basis until eventually I’d bump into so and so (who’s now walking with a pronounced limp) and realise with horror that I never did get around to sponsoring them.

Now I know what it’s like to be on the other side of those emails, anxiously checking my Virgin Money Giving page several times a day willing it change and the feeling of dread when you realise just how far you have to go to reach your target.

“You will change………You must change………..Please, please change……”

But then when someone does donate there’s a surge of pride and satisfaction as you realise that there’s someone who agrees with you.

Someone has decided that YOUR challenge and YOUR cause is worth their hard earned cash and just as importantly they've taken five minutes out of their day to make sure you get it!

Simple economics dictates that some donations are worth more than others but the truth is every one matters, it doesn’t matter if you’ve given £1 or £100, you’ve taken the time to do it and that’s what counts.

Because at the end of the day, when I’m struggling on the mountain, having my moment of doubt, it’s your names and comments, not the amounts, that will carry me through.

Leaving, On A Jet Plane…….

I’ve finally booked my flights, and whilst there was never any doubt that I was going to go but with a decent chunk taken out of credit card it really does feel like the point of no return!

I had hoped to have them sorted a while ago but I was waiting for confirmation of the date that I would need to arrive and  also because I wanted to spend a little time digging around reviewing my options were before parting with my hard earned cash.

I wouldn’t consider myself a nervous flyer but I do like as much comfort as possible (who doesn’t) and it was looking as though my best options were going to be a choice between Ethiopian Airlines and Kenyan Airways.

Irrational thought prevailed as I worried about pretty much everything, the condition of the planes, food, entertainment (?) and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t shake the vision of bouncing around in a 1930’s cargo plane with a couple of goats and a dozen chickens for company!

I wonder what the food's like!

I’ve no doubt that I’m being grossly unfair to both Kenyan Airways and Ethiopian Airlines (whom I’m told have one of the newest fleets in the skies) but I could have kissed the man at Dial-a-Flight when he told me that I could fly Virgin and change at Nairobi.

And after the better part of two weeks trekking up mountains and generally “roughing it” I thought so much for austerity and treated myself to the relative luxury of Virgins Premium Economy for the flight home!

“How Do You Solve A Problem Like Mt Meru” …….

Mount Meru stands a little over 40 miles to the West of Kilimanjaro and by all accounts has a character and charm above its status as an interesting warm up.

However I’m sure that it’s only the tiniest percentage (if any) of those that head to this part of the world Tanzania that come for Mount Meru rather than its more illustrious neighbour.

So with this in mind I knew that the odds were that having (successfully?) tackled Kilimanjaro I probably wouldn’t be coming back to this region making it now or never time for Meru!

I now faced three problems:

1.     Most operators only offer Meru as part of a Kilimanjaro package.

2.     I had a very limited timeframe.

3.     Doing it on my own was likely to be prohibitively expensive.

The first two problems were solved thanks to John from Warthog Mountaineering who arranges a lot of the Kids Company expeditions, including the Toubkal trek last year.

We were able to confirm that his operator in Tanzania was available to arrange the trek but as I feared doing the trek on my own pushed the cost to almost $400 more than I had originally budgeted.

So what do I do?

To make sure every penny I’m sponsored goes to the Kids Company I’m already covering the costs of the Kilimanjaro trek, so my finances are already stretched and I’ve yet to book my flights, however this should be the trek of a lifetime so is this really the time to be frugal?

In the end it didn’t need much thought or discussion to decide……

MOUNT MERU IS ON!

100 Mile Challenge – The Result…….

The last 30 days has, at times, felt like one of the Top Gear challenges. It starts off all light hearted and jaunty but as it progresses it becomes more serious and the closer you get to the finish you realise the closer the finish is going to be!

Except that my challenge didn’t have any jaw dropping scenery, nor did it come with a tension building soundtrack and there certainly wasn’t any V12 supercharged sports cars to eat up the mileage!

I always knew it was going to be tough and to be honest if I’d realised just how hard it was going to be I probably wouldn’t have started it in the first place. But then that would have somewhat missed the point.

I’ve learnt a lot about myself, physically I’m much stronger than I would have believed and my recent trip to the Lake District really highlighted how well this improved fitness translates into time on the hill.

But perhaps more importantly I have discovered new depths to my emotional reserves, a desire to keep going when everything else is crying out for me to stop.  Never was this more apparent than in the last few days when it has felt that even the elements have been against me!

Over the last month I have taken a little over 17 hours to complete 19 runs.

I have used an estimated 16,000 calories and spent almost 5 hours stretching.

My average speed has been just under 9.5 km per hour.

And throughout the month at no point has the percentage of distance completed exceeded the percentage of time elapsed………

Until tonight.

100.93 miles of 100 completed (£60.56 raised).

November 100 mile challenge………..DONE!

The Early Bird Catches the Worm (Apparently)……….

The summit day on Kilimanjaro starts at midnight.  OK, so the sharp minded amongst you are probably thinking “but doesn’t every day start at midnight?” 

What I mean is that on Kilimanjaro you start WALKING at midnight, Mount Meru is far more civilised, allowing you to lie in until 2am before you lace up your boots and start the long push for the summit.

So in some dark corner of my mind it made sense that on my final day in the Lake District I got up nice (?) and early (5:30am) and walked a couple of hours in the dark hopefully getting somewhere high where, camera in hand, I could witness the most spectacular of sunrises!

Given that I would still have a six hour drive ahead of me I’d planned a short(ish) route that would take me up to White Side and along to Raise where I would then have the option of heading back along Sticks Pass or continuing to Stybarrow Dodd and Sheffield Pike.

 White Side (left) and Raise (centre)

You can just about make out the path I followed zigzagging  it’s way up Raise before cutting across to Whiteside

At the risk of making another obvious statement, walking in the dark is odd! 

Your entire world consists the circle of light thrown out from your headtorch, and even this is an unnatural “half light” flattening textures and making it difficult to anticipate the bumps and dips on the track.

There’s no sense of the ground covered or the distance left to go and with almost no peripheral vision it’s all too easy to pass within feet of key landmarks (such as the cairn at the top of White Side) without spotting them.

The fog thickened as dawn approached and it was obvious that I wasn’t going to get the sunrise I had hoped for so after a very quick self portrait at the top of raise I headed for Sticks Pass content in the knowledge that I would have the drive home to recollect what a fantastic weekend it had been.

 Darkness, fog and Simong at the top of Raise

Camping Barns and Intruder Alarms……….

I’d never stayed in a Camping Barn before but I had struggled to find Campsites that were open this late in the year and its location between Helvellyn and High Street made the Swirral Barn an obvious choice.

 Swirral Camping Barn

The barn is part of a complex of buildings which include a YMCA and a few other club huts centred around an old lead mine and despite having eight beds I had it to myself for most of my stay all for the princely sum of £8 a night!

 Swirral Camping Barn is the taller building on the second level

Claire seems to have this bizarre notion that whenever I go away I am going to get hacked to pieces in my tent by some fell walking maniac whereas I work on the basis that most psychopaths are actually rather compulsive and therefore not likely to wander into the middle nowhere on the off chance that they’ll stumble across a random victim!

But you can never be too sure and given that the barn is only secured by a keypad, which as best as I can tell the code has been given to anyone who has ever stayed there (psychopaths included), I fashioned a rather sophisticated intruder alarm out of an empty beer bottle and slept like a baby!

 I’m seriously considering taking this onto Dragons Den

“Hello, my name is Simon and I’m after £100,000 for a 0.01% share in my home security company”