Post madness feed ...

Lisa here again ...

Post the madness that was our walk on Saturday, we warmed through in a lovely pub (with the most miserable staff EVER) called The Wellington in Breacon.  The food was spot on ... just what we needed after all that horrid weather.  Whether we needed the desserts too is another matter but boy did they look good ... :)


Nigel and his cheescake!



Grant and his Sticky Toffee Pudding!

 Clever photography here making sure I was always behind the camera so no one can see the sheer amount I ate that afternoon! :)

Lunacy, madness, scary, adventurous fun. I think!

It's 9am, it's freezing cold, you can't see more than a few yards in front of you because af the driving rain and I am sat in a flooded car park in the brecon beacons in Wales waiting for Grant, Lisa and George to arrive.
What madness has descended on me? Sometimes don't you just wish you'd said no! Sorry Grant I'm busy Saturday..... Sorry Grant I need to take the kids swimming. Instead of ...Sure Grant I'll gladly get up at 5am saturday morning and drive 3 hours to the middle of Wales to go walking in a bog and incessant rain!

But of course as is often the case, like the film you didnt really want to see but enjoyed very much, or the dinner party you didnt want to go to but left feeling it was pretty good... things that you don't expect to be good often are. And so it proved to be - but in a very masochistic way! Lunacy, madness, insane, scary, dangerous, ... All these words come to mind for the walk we did today.

Without a shred of exaggeration, it rained incessantly throughout the walk, the wind blew constantly with gusts of 80mph - yes 80 mph - sometimes physically lifting us into the air! Even so it was brilliant. It was tough but exhilarating. The memory of being physically lifted up and blown down a mountain for maybe 20 feet with your team laughing their heads off behind will remain with me for some while. We were like Strictly Come Dancing Contestants but without any partners.

Two important lessons were learnt however. Firstly, we all learnt that whilst our fitness was good our kit was not - we all got soaked. Drenched. Saturated. Completely and utterly soaked. Our socks, trousers, shirts well everything really was thoroughly wet. If this was Kilimanjaro and I had the kit I took with me today: well I'd have been in a bit of trouble! A visit to the shop tomorrow is definitely required to get some gortex gloves, and protection to stop water getting into my socks..

Secondly and more importantly, we learnt the vital importance of being well prepared. Half way up one of the three summits we did, (my god we did three in that mess of a day!) we perhaps managed to prevent a human disaster. And I'm deadly serious. A father was at the top with his two children aged I guess 14 and about 8. Dressed in the wrong clothes, no proper shoes or rain gear, the children were very close to hypothermia of that there is no doubt. Between us (Alistair, Grant's friend was amazing frankly) we grabbed hold of and frog-marched the kids back to the bottom (still took an hour and a half mind) and arrived in the nick of time as they were so very close to collapse. The more we looked back on this the closer we realise that danger was so marginally averted.

When we got back to the cars we went to Cotswold Outdoors to browse where we were told that the mountains were closed today to all but the most experienced mountaineers. I don't know at this point if I felt proud or a little foolhardy. Regardless, this strange day was just great and a fantastic test of fitness, equipment, mental strength and so much more.

Thanks Grant.

P.S. I probably owe the fact that I'm still able to attempt Kili to my good friend Sean O'Connor. Yesterday Sean marched me off to a London based shop to get a protective wrist brace to protect the two fractured bones. Well today it had two effects: Firstly I managed to climb okay (though with no real pressure on the right wrist) but importantly yet again (what is it with me this trip?) I fell over again and again landed partially on my right arm and wrist. To say that the brace prevented any further damage is the understatement of the century. Sean: I owe you.

Twit, idiot and other profanities.....

Oh what joy!

After 12 days of worsening pain sadly today my worst fears have been realised and I learned that I have not one but two fractured bones in my right wrist following my oh so graceful fall down the mountain in Austria! Not big fractures at all but fractures nonetheless.

The good news is that the injury will not stop me going to kilimanjaro or from setting off.

The bad news is that unless it is nearly healed by then, the pressure and increased blood flow and pulse at the higher altitudes may stop me going above a certain (who knows what) height. Time will tell I suppose.

Oh what joy !!!!! Never a dull moment eh?

Anyone know any bone mending spells??

Bhutan

Hi - Brian here. Just back from Bhutan which was fabulous “training” and so varied as a quick glance at these pictures will show. Highly recommended and a damn sight better than the bloody Gym!!  Brian

Lisa's first contribution to the blog . fundraising at Christmas time :)

Okay, so probably best to point out first that this is Lisa writing ... a Kili team member! Nigel has kindly (or perhaps foolishly) given all team members access to the blog so I thought I'd share my fundraising wisdom with you all :)



That's me ... oh and Nigel of course at the top of Ben Nevis a few months back!



As the clock ticks by, our fundraising efforts have moved up another notch.  With a total pot currently sitting at around £38,000 we have exceeded our expectations already, but fingers crossed with a few big events planned and a few more fundraising ideas up our sleeves we should hit the big £50,000 by the time we go.  Fingers crossed.

So in terms of the fundraising I've been doing ... well back in December I jumped on the back of the London office's (Sportingbet) charity raffle and managed to persuade them to change the charity this year to the Injured Jockey's Fund, one of the Kili team's charities, and one of the core charities Sportingbet supports.  

The charity raffle is an annual event where all Christmas gifts recieved by Directors and Senior Managers are pooled together and employees buy raffle tickets to win the gifts.  This year we had an incredible amount of gifts ... who said we were in a recession?!  Gifts included hampers from Harvey Nicholls, Fortnum and Mason and Harrods and far too many bottles of wine and champagne.  Our sponsorship team also gave away tickets to some of our sponsored teams matches over the Christmas season including Wolverhampton Wanderers on Boxing Day and Spurs during January.  In total we had over 40 prizes to give away!!

As you can imagine, most people were pretty keen to buy a raffle ticket, with some people actually splashing out and buying over twenty tickets each, all at £1 per ticket.  In total we managed to raise just under £1,400.

It's worth mentioning here that one of the prizes was a whole leg of Serrano Ham given by one of our Spanish clients. It looked truly amazing and apparently is worth quite a bit of money.  Anyway, one of my colleagues was deperate to get his hands on this prize.  When he didn't win, he proceeded to give the actual winner £150 in cash to take the prize away.  This money was donated to our total fundraising pot!

Thanks to everyone based in the Sportingbet London offices ... a great start to my fundraising efforts!

Outside of this, I have a few ideas planned for January besides simply pestering everyone I know every way I know possible - facebook, twitter, email, in person, by text ... ... ... :) 

My first idea - a small change box on my desk - is already in action (see picture) ... its only raising pennies, but as they say, "every penny counts"!! 

As for my training ... let's just say my quad muscles hurt A LOT!

Not the bloody wrist again !!!!!!!!!!!!

So my family and I went off on boxing day to Obergurgl. Paula, Emma and Adam to ski and me to climb up the 8000 feet peaks over there. Obergurgl is magnificent and the weather (again there) was just amazing. There was plenty of snow and the sunset scenery was just stupendous.

My loyal training partner son, Adam, joined me on the third day for one of the climbs which was great.

Emma is a very good skier and came second in her high-grade race and Adam had the best time of the day in his more junior race. Pretty good kids - well done !!

Then on the last day I did it again. Having successfully climbed and descended the local 8000 feet peak  4 times in the week I went out on the last day, in far too icy conditions and pretending to be superman, an hour from the bottom I  slid about 40 feet down a descent slope and landed on my wrist. Those that no me know that last year I broke my left wrist in Obergurgl - this time I landed on the right. For ten minutes I lay there and dared not move. Bloody hell no I thought - not two years on the trot !!!!!

At the moment it is very swollen and painful though I am pretty sure it is not broken- just very badly sprained. Hopefully it'll be mended in 4 weeks. Cos that's all the time we have left before we go !!!!!!!!! I can't hold a pole and I can't really move it. Ice-packs and anti-inflammatories are my new best friends.

A great start to 20011. What an idiot I feel.

Fun, a bit scary, proud and lucky !!

"Come on Dad" said Adam early this morning. There isn't much snow let's go and do some Kilimanjaro training !!!

Adam is my 9 year old son and my sometimes training partner. So at 9.30am this morning, with just a few millimetres of snow on the ground, we set off to Aldbury for a three hour walk in the winter air. Whilst there were some signs of snow in the sky, the air was crisp and clear, the temperature was not too bad and we were ready for a nice long training walk.

Well everything started off fine......................and we made great progress for the first hour or so. 

And then all hell broke loose. We were about 600 feet up on an exposed plain when the mother of all snow storms swept in and literally blanketed the area to about 6 inches deep in a matter of 60 minutes. For sure one of the most incredible things I think I've ever seen. Visibility was down to literally in front of your face.

Even though we were initially quite calm about things and just carried on, we soon realised we couldn't actually see which way we were going, which way was back and in fact where we were !

"What a great adventure Dad" came the pearl of wisdom as my fearless boy fell into heaps of laughter about not being able to see.

Faced with a real white-out, do discretion over-ruled our Gladiatorial heads and we turned around and retraced our footsteps. I took several photos of what it was like but even with the decent camera I had with me they didn't come out. 

The two below however taken at the end of the 2 hours we did manage show just how much things changed in about 60 minutes. It was fun and a little scary. What I did learn however is that my supreme-climber of a son is someone I am just incredibly proud of. He didn't panic, he kept our spirits up and just got on with it. 

Well done mate!