What do you do on a weekend? Spend time with the family, have a catch-up with friends or just relax at home after a busy week? Well, for our Purchasing Assistant, Lorraine Branson, she goes to new heights on her days off, literally – as she has recently completed the Yorkshire 3 Peaks Challenge. A great feat by anyone’s standards, the Yorkshire 3 peaks, sees some of the highest points in England with the tallest of the 3 mountains reaching heights of 736 m! Lorraine, who is the leader of her local scout group ‘Thorne 62nd Scouts’ was joined by 6 other hikers taking on the challenge!
The Challenge They Faced:
The Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge is a 24-miles (38.6km) round trip and includes 1585m (5200ft) of ascent, including the 3 mountains of Pen-y-Ghent (694 metres), Whernside (736 meters) and Ingleborough (723 metres) in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. With an early start, the Scouting team began their journey from camp and began their ascent up Ingleborough, and despite the very bad weather and poor visibility reached the top in good time for lunch! Caution had to be made heading down the mountain as they headed to their next stop, Pen-y-Ghent! Despite being the lowest in height, this was by no means the easier challenge and during the climb, the weather took a turn for the worst with gale-force winds and heavy rain. The down poor didn’t stop Lorraine and her team as they soldiered on tackling another peak! The 3rd and final one to tackle was Whernside, heading passed the Ribblehead Viaduct as the sun finally began to shine and the wind dropped, at last, some good weather for the scouting team, as they tackled the last part of the challenge!
Despite the gloomy weather, the team completed their 3 peaks challenge! As well as a great personal achievement to all who took part they also were able to raise over £2,000 for their scouting group to provide new activity and camping equipment! Lorraine finished the challenge with an incredible time of 10 hours and 50 minutes, more than an hour under the average time of 12 hours!
Everyone at Cromwell would like to congratulate Lorraine and the team on this incredible achievement, with Lorraine sharing a few final words about the trekking experience: ‘The challenge was certainly worth the time and pain spent, to be able to provide our young people with new equipment to develop multiple skills through adventurous experiences such as camping and archery equipment, a unique opportunity that they may not get elsewhere. It was also a fantastic opportunity for a bit of team building, getting to know our volunteers better, working together as Scouts should, to support each other through this grueling, physical challenge that saw all four seasons in one day! Will we take the Scouts to do it one day, perhaps. The next challenge suggested is the National 3 Peaks….perhaps once the memories of this one have faded!’