Mum and I have decided (in a moment of madness) to join in The Gurkha Welfare Trust's 'Climb Everest at Home' challenge, as a result of being inspired by so many wonderful people over this lockdown period. 

We will be ascending the height of Everest, all 8,848m of it, starting May 1st and in order to push ourselves, we have agreed to do it in 4 weeks (taking in to account our daily lockdown exercise limit). For the locals (and for those who aren't, view our gallery), we have decided to do this by climbing the Laverstock Downs (Panda Hill) - which means we'll have to ascend it roughly 220 times.

The Gurkha Welfare Trust https://www.gwt.org.uk/ ensures that Gurkha veterans, their widows and their wider communities are able to live with dignity in Nepal, through the provision of financial, medical and community aid. For 200 years, the Gurkhas fought for us and now it is up to us to fight for them. 

As most of you will know, I work for GWT myself and have been out to Nepal to experience first-hand the wonderful work the Trust delivers. I very often tell everyone how lucky I feel to work for such a wonderful cause and so now i'm doing my bit, along with our wonderful supporters, to raise money during these strange times we find ourselves in. Any donation, no matter how big or small, will be so gratefully received. Your support will help veterans, their widows and communities at this really vulnerable time, when projects across the country have had to be paused and while our most vulnerable beneficiaries are still in need of aid.

Each climb will be recorded and i'm sure there will be many sweaty photographs alongside it. If you have a spare few pennies to make the sore bums worth it, we would be ever so grateful. Depending on how this goes - maybe one year we'll attempt Everest ourselves (Mum doesn't seem too keen, but I have 220 climbs to persuade her).