Hi I’m Gemma and I live in Newcastle and work as an Audit Director at KPMG.

2020 was bad enough for everyone but it was even tougher for my best friend, Emma, who was diagnosed with bowel cancer at the extremely young age of 36. She bravely fought this disease throughout the pandemic, going alone to her chemotherapy appointments and ultimately going in to hospital for life-saving surgery, again on her own, in September of 2020. She is now clear of cancer but it’s fair to say this has changed her life and late in 2020 she got the crazy idea to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds (and just as importantly, awareness) for Bowel Cancer UK. Seeing what she went through and as her best friend, when she asked me to join, how could I say no?!

We are going to be trekking to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in January 2022. It is the highest single free-standing mountain in the world: 5,895 metres above sea level and about 4,900 metres above its plateau base.

The trek will take 9 days (just over 6 up and just over 2 down) and will involve camping on the mountain each night. There are 7 of us completing this challenge, as part of a wider team of around 13, and 4 of our group are young women who have had bowel cancer so I am even more thrilled to be able to support more of these strong ladies.

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 you can see how tough this challenge will really be for me and the rest of the team.

I am doing this Self-Funded so every penny raised on my page will go direct to the charity. I would really appreciate any donation, no matter how small, and a like and share of my page. Thanks for reading 😊

Bowel Cancer UK are the UK’s leading bowel cancer charity. They fund targeted research, provide expert information and support to patients and their families, educate the public and professionals about the disease and campaign for early diagnosis and access to best treatment and care. They’re here to stop people dying of bowel cancer.