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I am taking part in the Mind Hike 2017  - The Lake District, 24-25 June 2017

The Challenge

The Mind Hike is ... a 24 hour trekking challenge - day and
night; trekking approx 50 km from Grasmere, through the beautiful Langdale valley before climbing between the mountains to circle the fells around High Raise and take the Coast to Coast path back to the start. The other loop follows an extended version of the famous Fairfield horseshoe, one of the Lake District's most challenging routes. Teams will climb 800 metres to the summits of Great Rigg, Fairfield, Hart Crag and Dove Crag. 

I’ll admit this is a daunting challenge - but with the right training and
mind-set I’m determined to do it. So my challenge before the challenge is to make sure I’m fit and trek worthy - I have created a blog to track the progress of my training - you can visit it here: http://ahoythelakes.blogspot.co.uk

Why I am doing this

This is the bit I found very difficult to write ... I'm doing this in memory of  my sister Lucy, who died in February last year at the age of 39, from an indirect result of a self-harming incident. 

A few years ago Lucy began to develop severe depression and her health really spiraled down; she began to get into real difficulties, resulting in losing her job and got herself into an unhappy living situation. She started to take overdoses of her medication and paracetamol and committed acts of self-harm. Eventually, she began to get some real help and support, her health began to improve … but one of the self-harming incidents, where Lucy inserted a needle into her abdomen, which then entered and traveled up the bloodstream, eventually lodging into the left ventricle wall of her heart; 18 months later, the area around it began to herniate and eventually burst causing multiple mini strokes, which left Lucy severely brain damaged - sadly she never recovered and died 4 days later on 8th February 2016. 

There is a small comfort here, Lucy had got the help she needed before this happened and was beginning to recover; she found somewhere better to live and was looking into volunteering and working towards a slow return to work, so she was on her way.  I want to help support Mental Health services and the people who helped my sister, to ensure others get the help they need. One way I can do that, is  raise money for Mind, so they can continue to promote more awareness and a better understanding of mental health issues, to ensure reliable services are available and provide support to anyone in a bad situation, this includes their loved ones and family ... here's the link again to visit Mind's website, to see all the things they do: http://mind.org.uk 

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Many thanks for visiting.

Vicky