We are now climbing in the Atlas Mountains starting on the 29th January 2023 and attempting to summit Jbel Toubkal in the early hours of 3rd February 2023. The trip will run over 10 days giving us a chance to summit again should our first attempt be unsuccessful due to bad weather. The summit and approach will be on snow and ice and will push us to the limit of my capabilities. I have been able to persuade my friend Phil Hobbs to join me and our mutual encouragement will hopefully see us summit together.

Toubkal is a mountain peak in southwestern Morocco, located in the Toubkal National Park. At 4,167 metres (13,671 ft), it is the highest peak in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco, and North Africa and it will be the highest peak we have climbed to date.

We are raising funds equally for Helen and Douglas House and Re:Act Disaster Response.

Helen and Douglas House is a wonderful Oxfordshire charity and my friend Jack has spent many happy days there. I have been lucky enough to know Jack since he was born and he is my inspiration for climbing Toubkal, as he was when my daughter Evie and I climbed from sea to peak to summit Mount Olympus in Cyprus in 2017. It will be my first mountain over 4000 meters, and I will be carrying a picture of Jack to look at every time I think I might not make it.

They need to raise £3.6 million each year to care for local terminally ill children at the hospice and at home. That works out at a little under £500 an hour, I would love to raise enough to keep Helen & Douglas House going for at least an hour or two. If you click on this link you can read all about why H&D is one of Oxfordshire's favourite charities. www.helenanddouglas.org.uk/

My second charity is Re:Act Disaster Response a group I joined a couple of years ago in after a call to action during the pandemic. I have been deployed a number of times as a domestic responder and trained as a both a domestic and international responder. I was deployed to Lublin in Poland to help with the humanitarian aid going into the Ukraine earlier this summer 2022.
I have recently qualified in Emergency First Aid and I am hoping to attend a Wilderness First Responders Course later this year. Many volunteers are military veterans, many come from blue light services; others are simply people with a burning desire to make a real difference. All are humanitarians.

Re:Act is an emergency in crisis response charity, operating in the UK and overseas. Their mission is to direct humanitarian action, in the fastest time, for those hardest to reach and the most vulnerable. They repurpose the hard-earned skills and experience of military veterans and turn them into exceptionally agile and resilient humanitarians, capable of rapidly deploying when people need immediate and urgent relief. If you click on the link and read about the amazing work that this charity does, you will understand why I am immensely proud to be a small part of this organisation. www.re-act.org.uk/

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