'Hard core' West Berkshire Council team summit Ben Nevis

Over £3,600 raised for Newbury homeless charity

A ‘hard-core’ team from West Berkshire Council has climbed the UK’s highest mountain to help raise nearly £4,000 for a charity for the homeless.

An eight-strong team from the council’s maximising independence team, which supports adults being discharged from hospital across West Berkshire, successfully completed a recent climb of Ben Nevis.

The team – Lucy Coulson, Rebecca Hitching, Sarah Ash, Maddy Taylor, Mia Holmes, Gill Creighton, Nevetta Whorriskey and Victoria Coles – dreamed up the personal challenge, aiming to raise funds for Newbury charity Loose Ends, which supports homeless and vulnerable people in the town, little realising what they had undertaken.

“We did not realise until we actually did the climb, how hard core it was – anyone who says it’s easy is, frankly, lying,” said Ms Holmes, who continued, of the 11-hour climb, including ascent and descent: “There were times of hysteria... and lulls of morale. We were expecting a few ‘outbursts’ along the way but actually I think everyone coped very well.”

Relieved to safely reach the summit, a drama then unfolded, in poor visibility, after Maddy Taylor wandered off for a ‘ciggie’, close to an area with a sheer drop, to be snatched back from the brink of a potentially very dangerous fall, by the team’s ‘hero’ compass and map reader.

Ms Holmes said: “[Team member’s husband] Bernie Coulson realised that to continue in that direction would have meant that Maddy would have reached the bottom of Ben Nevis way before any of the rest of us did!

“Anyway, we laughed it off and use it as one of our ‘survival stories’.”

So far the group have raised a – still rising – amount of £3,660 for the charity, with social events, individual sponsorship and through the fundraising website www.gofundme.com.