Follow the walk at @georgebrill_

On the 23rd March, 5 years to the day that I first caught Covid and slid into a hell I didn’t know existed, I start walking 2650km from Land’s End to John O’Groats via the best of the UK’s mountains: the Welsh 3000s, the English 3000s, and the Scottish 4000s. (Map below)

The reality is that even if I don’t manage a single mountain it will be a success. Just to have got to here has been the hardest challenge I’ve ever been up against, and the proudest I’ve ever been. Just to walk in the mountains is to do something that many times I thought I’d never be able to do again.

While this expedition is largely selfish, I hope to raise money for Long Covid Support, a charity concerned with advocacy, research and support for those affected by the condition. The last 5 years have exposed me to just how many people live with disability, visible and invisible, large and small, preventing them from living the life they wish to. Closest to me have been those of the Long-Covid/CFS community—an insidious illness of suffering, loss and crippling fear that tears away the freedom to engage with the world and people around us, draining joy and capacity from every aspect of life, both physical and psychological.

No physical challenge can ever come close to the struggle of living these illnesses day-to-day; the resilience to get up and fight will never compare with the resilience to simply keep enduring when hope seems empty and to fight is to lose ground.

I walk for those who cannot. Because I was given a second chance. There exists another version of myself that didn’t make it back: a shadow of the grey half-life I might still be living. I owe it to that ghost and every other person that can no longer rise and fight. Anything less is to scorn the most precious gift of all: freedom.