I’ll be upfront with you: I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a mountain person. Prior to June 2022, my relationship with hills was simple enough: I didn’t bother them, they didn’t bother me, and everyone was happy. So when the idea of taking on the National Three Peaks Challenge came up in support of Beth’s Wishes Foundation, the sensible part of my brain had a few things to say about it.
I ignored that part of my brain and signed up anyway.
The Three Peaks are Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell Pike in England, and Snowdon in Wales, the highest points of their respective nations. The challenge is to climb all three within 24 hours, which means a lot of driving through the night between mountains, surviving on snacks and adrenaline, and questioning your life choices somewhere around 5am on a British hillside.
What I wasn’t prepared for was how much the reason for being there would carry me. On the hard stretches, and there were plenty, when legs were burning and the summit felt impossibly far away, I kept thinking about Beth, about the young people the Foundation exists to support, about what real struggle looks like. Suddenly, my aching knees felt like a very small thing to offer. You keep moving. One foot in front of the other.
We made it. All three. I won’t pretend I didn’t cry a little, from exhaustion, from relief, from pride, and from something harder to name than any of those things.
I am still not a mountain person. But I learned something on those peaks that I carry with me: you don’t have to be built for something to do it. You just have to have a good enough reason. Beth’s Wishes is a very good reason indeed.
With our best wishes, Beth’s Wishes