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Dementia is one of the cruellest of diseases; it devastates the lives of those who suffer from it, and also of those close to them. It currently affects more than 850,000 people in the UK; with rising life expectancy this number is forecast to grow to more than 1 million by 2025, and as high as 2 million by 2050. Not only does it exact a huge personal toll, but it is also estimated to cost the UK economy more than £25 billion every year - more than cancer and heart disease combined. There is no cure, and the few medications currently available do no more than alleviate the symptoms - for a time.

Despite all this, dementia is one of the most underfunded areas of medical research. It receives no government funding, and Alzheimers Research UK (ARUK), which is the major UK charity working in this field (and which carries out research into all forms of dementia, not just Alzheimers which is the most common), relies entirely on donations to fund its essential work.

ARUK is the charity partner of Parkrun, which has been a feature of my Saturday mornings for the past few years. When an email from ARUK to Parkrunners popped into my mailbox in October 2019, seeking participants to climb Kilimanjaro to raise money for the charity, I was first intrigued, then excited by the opportunity to help support ARUK's vital work through a challenge that would test me to the limits. I probably should have slept on it, but signed up before caution could get the better of me ...

Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa, and at 19,340 feet is the highest free-standing mountain in the world. It's not a climb that requires specialist mountaineering skills, but is more like a (very) hard trek. Getting up and down will take eight days, averaging 6-8 hours of trekking each day, and 12-15 hours, including climbing through the night, when we go for the summit and (hopefully!) reach it at dawn the next day.

The climb was originally scheduled for March 2021 - until Covid intervened. It was postponed to October, and then to the following March - but that also proved a bit premature, so it's now due to take place in July 2022. At least that should give me a bit more time to get into shape!

I've not done anything like this before, but have been training (fairly) hard, and spent a tough weekend in Snowdonia last October with some others who've signed up for the climb, under the watchful eyes of a couple of ex-army instructors. Since then the North Downs in Kent have mostly been the closest I've been able to get to climbing practice, although I'm heading back to Snowdonia at the end of May for another weekend.