Friday 10th May I drove up to Glasgow so that my team and I could get some more valuable training in. First things first though, my Barclays Commercial team were holding a charity evening for the event on the Friday night and I really wanted to attend. I arrived in Glasgow mid afternoon after leaving home at 7am and booked in to my hotel room at the Novotel. They had reserved me a parking space in the car park so thankfully no dramas getting in. After having a bath I lay down on the bed and promptly fell asleep so was lucky when I woke up just before the event started. I rushed down to Glasgow town centre and was amazed to find a whole street of disabled parking bay just 300 yards from the venue, now that's the way it should be! Ann and Raemond from Capability Scotland had come over from Edinburgh to be at the event so it was great to catch up with them again. First we had the auction that raised over £2500 by giving away weekend golfing holidays, spa days, a chance to drive a sports car for the day and much much more. Then the raffle raised nearly as much again with prizes of meals out, cinema and theatre tickets. All in all the evening raised over £5000 which put us well on our way to our 10k target. After the raffle the disco started so all the girls jumped on to the floor to "bust there moves" and make some shapes while all the guys stood at the bar ogling. J
Saturday morning we all met up and drove the 40 odd miles up to Loch Lomond for the days training. A beautiful setting but we managed to arrive on the same day as a hill climbing race so we had to compete for space with 50 or so runners which wasn't great. So Caroline, Louise, Cat, Rob, Peter and I got all our kit on and started the ascent. Everyone was in great spirits and it was pretty impressive that we had all managed to get our diary's in order and make it happen. Straight away we could see that this was going to be worth the effort. In the Lakes on the first training session we had an army of people around all giving instruction and advice but now it was just down to us. Very quickly we got in to a rhythm and began to cover some good ground along some pretty hard going tracks. We had a few mishaps along the way but generally we were working well together as a team and it was exactly what we needed. We did have one section that caused us a problem though. On the way up we climbed through a section that was 20 foot high and full of very rough uneven rocks which really took some concentration and strength. The problem was that on the way down after 50 or so runners has been up and down, the rocks were all very wet and slippery which added to the danger. We solved this by tying the main rope to a tree with a slip knot that Pete fed slowly so that we had the chair secured to something. It was pretty breathtaking hanging off the side of this drop while clinging on to the rock with my fingernails, so I was glad when Cat said we wouldn't do anything quite as hard as that on Ben Nevis!!
All in all the day was a great success and really helped us bond as a team and work out how we would do things on the day. So a big hats off to my team members for dragging me up the mountain and not dropping me on the way down.
Bring on the Big Un!!!
I have set up a Just Giving donation page at http://www.justgiving.com/thewheellife4capabilityscotland
and a short interview they did with me.
http://justgiving.typepad.com/justgivings_blog/2008/05/well-i-nevis.html