Scaling new heights!

One of our children braves the snow and ice to climb one of England’s highest mountains

Although the recent cold weather has been an unwelcome guest for some, for our children it can be a chance to have new adventures! One of our Senior Residential Service Managers, Aidan, tell us about his recent trip with one of our children up one of England’s highest mountains!

“Climbing Blencathra…where do I even start? It was such an unforgettable adventure for both of us.

When our young man said he wanted to climb a mountain, we thought ‘what better for his first ever mountain than one of Cumbria’s biggest, and on a snowy day too!’ My first day back to work after New Year, and what a day to come back to. Thank goodness I had remembered to bring my thermals because it was so cold!

Before the trip there was lots of planning that went on behind the scenes between the Care team and the Outdoor team, who went the extra mile to hire boots and source extra large crampons for me due to my size 12 feet! 

On the day of the climb we set off from our outdoor stores around 10am with Verity and Pete from our outdoor team. Fair play to them for taking two very inexperienced walkers and leading them to the summit of Blencathra! 

Although it was a beautiful day, it was a real slog on the way up, and regret started to kick in after around an hour as I was blue in the face because of the cold. I was thinking ‘why did I agree to this?’ But then when we reached the summit after about 3 hours there was joy and jubilation, not just from me but also from our young man, who was so proud of his achievement. 

Both on the way up and the way down, our young man took immense pride in sharing with walkers that we passed how much he was loving life in Cumbria and that this was his first ever mountain climb. There were lots of compliments from other walkers, who praised his grit and determination and how well he had done to carry on and reach the top. This was genuinely lovely to see and hear. We took plenty of breaks to get pictures and cheer each other on, and shared lots of fruit pastilles and jelly babies! 

One of our favourite moments was looking at our footsteps in the snow behind us and seeing just how far we had walked, and just about being able to see our van as a tiny spec at the base of Blencathra. It was a realisation that all the hard work was worth the reward! 

We also loved sliding down the mountain as we got towards the bottom. The snow-covered hills and our waterproof trousers made it an easy and fun way to end our mission! We had some races sliding down the hills, which was an absolute blast.

I simply cannot put into words how grateful we are for the hard work of everyone who made this possible. I know that both myself and our young man will remember it always.

Each time we drive past Blencathra now we laugh about our sliding races and our surprise at how we managed to make it up and down!”