Greetings Terrans, a rare non-hobby post today but I wanted to report that I successfully completed the 3 Peaks Challenge last weekend! I believe the phrase is ‘smashed it’ judging by how much the youngsters in the group used the term. The sub-group that I was in managed all the walking in 13 hours & the done thing is to then add 9 hours for ‘optimal driving’ to give a total of 23hrs. In reality we were 2 hours over this due to a traffic delays & diversions, and for legally required driver breaks, but the T+9 method is apparently fine so I’m calling it a Win 😊

The group were great, and as the second oldest, I was delighted that I managed to keep up on the ‘ups’, though I did find the ‘downs’ tough. My feet took the brunt of it & are pretty battered now, but everything else held up well – much to my relief! The overall tiredness was hard, & snatching the odd hour of poor quality sleep on a minibus isn’t great physically or mentally, but we all got through it in (mostly) good spirits. The level of cold was also fun, with a perceived temperature of -10 Celsius / 14 Fahrenheit on the top of Ben Nevis, and -5c / 23f on the others… pretty serious stuff!

Overall, the wider group (something like 56 of us) had raised £55,000 for Mind at the time we started the challenge, which is just incredible. That said, my Just Giving page is still open if anyone missed it, or were just waiting to see if I actually finished the challenge! I don’t know how long it stays open, but it’s here:

Alex Jelley is fundraising for Mind (justgiving.com)  

Finally, I just want to thank you again for all of the support, and for the personal messages of encouragement – they really did mean a lot to me, and I am very grateful.

Have a pretty picture of the view from Scafell Pike in return :-)