William Fletcher
NATIONAL THREE PEAKS CHALLENGE
Fundraising for London's Air Ambulance
Story
UPDATE:
Some photos and a brief description of my challenge experience are located at:
http://abacus.gene.ucl.ac.uk/will/3peaks.shtml
Thank you to everyone for their generous donations! At the time of writing we have reached £870.00 which is amazing!
But I am reliably informed by the HEMS charity that they are charged £1300.00 for each mission they perform. So I have changed my target to reflect this and added £50 of my own to keep the ball rolling. Come on everyone, if you haven't donated yet, now is the time!!
ORIGINAL TEXT BELOW:
Hello and thank you for coming to my fund raising page!
Some friends and I are trying to complete the THREE PEAKS CHALLENGE. For those that don't know this involves climbing the tallest mountains in each of England, Scotland and Wales in just 24 hours. My hope is that I can raise more money than I spent on walking boots, waterproofs, head torch, hotel room, car hire, petrol etc otherwise I could have stayed at home and just wrote a cheque for the HEMS charity!! Of course, all your kind donations will go straight to HEMS and not cover any of my costs!
The Itinerary
The basic itinerary involves driving from London up to the Highlands of Scotland on Friday night/Saturday morning then climbing up and down Ben Nevis (1344m) first, starting at 2pm on the Saturday.
Next, we drive down to England and scale Scafell Pike (978m) in the Lake District at about 1am in the morning.
Finally, after another long drive down to Snowdonia in Wales, not having slept, we climb Mount Snowdon (1085m), finishing before the 24 hours is up at 2pm on Sunday and drive back to London.
Just to add some extra comedy to the whole event I am amazingly unfit at present (due to a very busy year finishing my PhD whilst working at Smartodds) and so this feat will no doubt test me to my limits!
The Charity
I am putting myself through this ordeal so I can raise some money for the London Air Ambulance (a.k.a. HEMS - Helicopter Emergency Medical Service) which provides a life-saving service, 365 days a year for everyday people within London and the M25. Despite some funding from sponsors this does not cover operating costs and they still need help raising funds in order to keep providing this care. It is the only one of its kind in London, and was the first service in the UK to fly with a Senior Trauma Doctor and Paramedics on board.
The service has been pivotal in saving countless lives as it allows patients with very serious injuries to be transported to hospital for first-class intensive care treatment during what is known as "The Golden Hour", after which a much much higher proportion of people don't survive.
I have been donating to this charity by standing order for about 12 years now as they do sterling work and I have personal experience of the benefits they bring. My father was in a plane crash in 1991 and thanks to the HEMS service he had the chance to fight for his life for 10 whole days in the high-quality intensive care wards of the Royal London Hospital. Had it not been for HEMS he would have certainly died long before a road ambulance could even have reached him. Therefore, I hope you will all dig deep and donate to this worthy cause!
Thanks for visiting and wish me luck!
Some photos and a brief description of my challenge experience are located at:
http://abacus.gene.ucl.ac.uk/will/3peaks.shtml
Thank you to everyone for their generous donations! At the time of writing we have reached £870.00 which is amazing!
But I am reliably informed by the HEMS charity that they are charged £1300.00 for each mission they perform. So I have changed my target to reflect this and added £50 of my own to keep the ball rolling. Come on everyone, if you haven't donated yet, now is the time!!
ORIGINAL TEXT BELOW:
Hello and thank you for coming to my fund raising page!
Some friends and I are trying to complete the THREE PEAKS CHALLENGE. For those that don't know this involves climbing the tallest mountains in each of England, Scotland and Wales in just 24 hours. My hope is that I can raise more money than I spent on walking boots, waterproofs, head torch, hotel room, car hire, petrol etc otherwise I could have stayed at home and just wrote a cheque for the HEMS charity!! Of course, all your kind donations will go straight to HEMS and not cover any of my costs!
The Itinerary
The basic itinerary involves driving from London up to the Highlands of Scotland on Friday night/Saturday morning then climbing up and down Ben Nevis (1344m) first, starting at 2pm on the Saturday.
Next, we drive down to England and scale Scafell Pike (978m) in the Lake District at about 1am in the morning.
Finally, after another long drive down to Snowdonia in Wales, not having slept, we climb Mount Snowdon (1085m), finishing before the 24 hours is up at 2pm on Sunday and drive back to London.
Just to add some extra comedy to the whole event I am amazingly unfit at present (due to a very busy year finishing my PhD whilst working at Smartodds) and so this feat will no doubt test me to my limits!
The Charity
I am putting myself through this ordeal so I can raise some money for the London Air Ambulance (a.k.a. HEMS - Helicopter Emergency Medical Service) which provides a life-saving service, 365 days a year for everyday people within London and the M25. Despite some funding from sponsors this does not cover operating costs and they still need help raising funds in order to keep providing this care. It is the only one of its kind in London, and was the first service in the UK to fly with a Senior Trauma Doctor and Paramedics on board.
The service has been pivotal in saving countless lives as it allows patients with very serious injuries to be transported to hospital for first-class intensive care treatment during what is known as "The Golden Hour", after which a much much higher proportion of people don't survive.
I have been donating to this charity by standing order for about 12 years now as they do sterling work and I have personal experience of the benefits they bring. My father was in a plane crash in 1991 and thanks to the HEMS service he had the chance to fight for his life for 10 whole days in the high-quality intensive care wards of the Royal London Hospital. Had it not been for HEMS he would have certainly died long before a road ambulance could even have reached him. Therefore, I hope you will all dig deep and donate to this worthy cause!
Thanks for visiting and wish me luck!