Their story, in their words…
Recently, with the help of the Mark Evison foundation, a charity who came into our school offering to sponsor students who wanted to take on out-of-school challenges, Matheus, Abdul, Bradley and I, all students in year 12, embarked on a 5 day hike.
This hike meant climbing all the mountains over 4000ft in the Cairngorm national park in northern Scotland. It involved wild camping which meant carrying all our food, clothes, and tents for 5 days. The Cairngorm national park is the biggest wilderness in the UK and, as a result, we were not going to be near any roads, let alone towns, for the entire trip. The remoteness of this national park made it even more challenging with heavy backpacks and rationed food.
In late May, we successfully completed this challenge. After climbing, navigating and traversing 5 of the highest mountains in the UK, walking a distance of 45km with a 90,000 step count and a total ascent of 2500m, we were very proud of what we had achieved as a group. Not only did we have fun, but we all learnt a lot about travelling on a budget and how to work effectively as a group. For example, when we woke up on the first morning of the hike it was so windy that the tents had fallen on our heads whilst we were asleep. We had to work together to fix the tents and then pack them away in some extreme winds developing our teamwork. Additionally, we all really enjoyed hiking in the snow near the top of the mountains and particularly when we got to the peaks and saw the amazing views below.
We want to thank the Mark Evison foundation who sponsored us on this adventure. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without them. After this amazing experience, we would absolutely encourage other students to complete challenges with the Mark Evison foundation.
