The weekend of the 4-5 April saw six intrepid walkers from across Morgan Cole’s
Oxford and Reading offices take part in the 9 Peaks Challenge across Snowdonia,
raising over £3,000 in aid of Feed the Children.

The team, comprising Nina O’Brien, Guy Constant, Jenni Howard, Rhiannon Jenkins, Susan Newberry, Kelly Brooks and their driver/chef Roger Bradley, arrived at the campsite late Friday evening just in time to put up the tents and head over for a nice hearty pub meal to set them up for the big challenge ahead. The howling wind and rain throughout the night dashed all hopes of any sleep, but the team nevertheless emerged at 5:30am ready for the first day of walking.

The event was billed as a "challenge", and this was certainly no misnomer, with the first day seeing the team walking for 14 hours across Carnedd Llewellyn, Carnedd Dafydd,  Pen yr Ole Wen and Glyder Fawr amongst others, through icy winds, up sheer rock faces and down (vertical) scree slopes to arrive back at the campsite just after sunset.

The second day culminated in a trek to the top of Snowdon, where the spectacular views across the Snowdonia National Park were a fitting reward for the four hour climb.  The night in a local hotel was certainly a welcome respite after over 20 hours of walking across the two days and enabled the team to exchange details of their hairy experiences
with the other walkers from the Metropolitan Police who had taken part in the challenge.

The combination of raffles, cake sales and sponsorship efforts of the team raised a grand total of £3,225.26 which will be put towards Feed the Children’s "stamp out the jiggers" campaign.  As one member of the team said "knowing that we had raised so much money for such a good cause helped spur us on through the tough patches and made the sore knees, stiff legs and painful ankles seem worthwhile (in hindsight!)".