Miss De'Ath Says Thank You!

Following her participation in the Charters Three Peaks Challenge, Miss De'Ath writes...

I am going to start with a Thank you! When we first agreed to this challenge I thought £10,000 was a very ambitious target, but with the amazing community we have around us I am really pleased to say we have achieved it, and the total currently stands at £10,182.52! 

We set off from school on Thursday 27 July and arrived at Ben Nevis in good time on Friday. We were due to start at 16:00 but decided to bring this forward an hour due to the awful weather forecast. This would give us an extra hour of daylight if something was the go wrong! Thankfully we didn’t need it - we made it to the top in 2hrs 10 minutes and were hit by 40mph winds, with no visibility. At the click of your fingers we went from being really quite warm from climbing, to freezing in the -8° windchill! Hats and gloves were hurridly put on as we powered to the bottom and made it to the bus in 4hrs 5 minutes. 

Brilliant! We were an hour ahead of our schedule, but we were soon to learn that this would very quickly disappear! There were roadworks 10 minutes away from Scafell Pike!!! This meant either a 100 mile diversion, or drive an hour and walk an extra 8km! We chose the latter! For me, Scafell was my low point. It went on and on with difficult navigation, and boulder fields on the top that just seemed like you were not making any progress! We made it back down by 07:30 and then had 7.5 hours to complete the challenge. 

Everyone was excited as this was still really doable, even though it would take 4 hours to drive to Snowdon! We had breakfast on the go in the bus, praying we didn’t get stuck in traffic, and those prayers were answered. We set off walking with 2hrs 55mins left on the clock and Mr Ruddle setting a great pace up the Pyg Track, climbing to the top in 1hour 30.

This was now a team on a mission! Descending, we bump into a familiar face... Mr Hancock!!! He had driven over to spur us on for the last leg and was just what we needed! The descent was busy, with lots of “excuse me please, team on a time mission”. Thankfully the majority moved aside! At the bottom of the Miners Track it was 14:20, and time for a jog to the finish on very tired legs! The gate was in sight, the pace picked up and we finished at 14:50! 

This was a fantastic endurance challenge and really does show if you dig deep everything is possible! Thank you everyone for your supportive messages, it really did help to push the team through!