We are Beck’s and Em (Rebecca Clarke and Emma Campbell) and here’s our story...we were both 36 year old mums of young children, in the prime of our lives, when from no where, with virtually no warning, we were diagnosed with bowel cancer in early 2020. Beck’s lives in Sheffield with her husband Simon and two children Alfie 5 and Evelyn 2.5 and Emma in Newcastle with her husband Kari and three children Jensen 8, Finlay 5.5 and Krista 1.5. 

We connected online on instagram, due to the sheer number of similarities between not only our cancer diagnosis’, but our lives, our interests and our personalities and we became firm friends; we couldn’t imagine enduring the last year without each other’s support. Despite chatting pretty much every day, we have only met twice! However this is soon going to change! 😁

2020 was awful for many, many people but going through lockdown while having to have chemotherapy... alone and scared, was the hardest thing we have ever done. But we did it. We both also had to go into hospital at the peak of the corona virus outbreak, for serious bowel surgery; again alone. It was a horrific and scary time, but we got through it with the support of our friends and family, our positivity and of course the support of each other. We are both now all clear and continue to support each other through our maintenance scans; the bond we have continues and we started 2021 feeling in the position to be able to give back. That’s when our year of Bowel-tastic challenges was launched!

We have already, in just three months, raised over £6000 for Bowel Cancer Uk this year (100% of this went to the charity) on our other Just Giving page, through a series of difficult challenges! For example we cycled ‘virtually’ from Lands End to John O’Groats in January, we climbed the stairs the height of Ben Nevis in February and we baked treat boxes every weekend in March; as well as being supported by friends doing their own challenges! It has been a way for us to focus our energy and efforts into something positive, to work together on something good and of course to raise vital money for this incredibly under funded charity, which needs desperately to research the increase of bowel cancer in younger people as well as finding cures; specifically where the cancer has spread like it had for both of us (Beck’s into lymph nodes and Emma into liver.) We want to live to see a lifetime where all bowel cancer is curable and we believe this IS possible in our lifetimes. 

SOOOOO we decided that actually in order to raise MORE awareness of our stories and of bowel cancer in young people, to raise even MORE money for Bowel Cancer UK and to hopefully inspire other young people with a Bowel Cancer diagnosis by doing something completely EPIC just two years after our own diagnosis... we wanted to do something even bigger, better and more crazy than ever..... so what could be bigger or more challenging than this

...We are going to be trekking to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in January 2022 and in order to fund this AND raise money for Bowel Cancer UK, we are hoping to raise another £10,000 via this new Just Giving page; this will cover some of our trip costs as well as vital donations to Bowel Cancer Uk too.

So lets just talk about this for a second... here’s some facts about what we are hoping to achieve in March 2022...

Mount Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania, Africa, and at 5,895 metres tall, it is the World’s tallest freestanding mountain!

It is one of the tallest volcano’s ever to break through the Earths crust!

The trek will take 9 days (5.5 up and 2.5 down) and will involve camping on the mountain!

Working with the organisation Charity Challenge, the route we will be travelling is the Lemosho route (not the quickest but with a decent success rate and better chance to acclimatise and hopefully prevent altitude sickness)!

On average Kilimanjaro success rate for the summit is 66%!

So yes.. this is going to be an EPIC challenge and probably one of the hardest things we have ever done. However we are so excited to do it and just know every single donation means the world to us and to Bowel Cancer Uk, who are incredibly excited we are taking on this challenge for them, and happy to support us with it. I know that together we will do it, as we are super determined and it will be another finger in the face to cancer when we are standing at the summit of this giant mountain... we are doing it for ourselves but for all of the other bowel cancer warriors out there too.

So thank you for any support you can give us with this challenge. We will never be glad that cancer happened to us, but we are forever thankful that we found each other and can’t wait to hug each other at the top of Kilimanjaro after everything we have been through.

Lots of love,

Beck’s and Em xxx

Emma and her family March 2021

Beck’s and her family March 2021