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To view our summer 2010 newsletter, click here.

To view our spring 2010 newsletter, click here.

It was a sunny morning in London on the 17th September 2010, waking early, the drivers collected the car; a people carrier, although the person who designed it only did have ‘people’ in mind for it. It must have escaped them that the ‘people’ travelling might travel with luggage!! However we managed to stuff the car full of clothing kit, walking poles, esckies of food, pillows, blankets and team, 1 x driver (Milo) and 4 climbers (Alannah, Ockie, Graham and Me).

Once packed, we set off out of London. There isn’t much to this part of the story, apart from I will recommend to any of you who fancy a little drive and taking in some wonderful scenic views, the north part of the M6 really is a beautiful bit of motorway…

After 10 hours of car games, some snoozing, general banter and standard bad traffic around Glasgow we made it to Fort William on the West cost of Scotland at about 7pm. Early supper and off to bed ready for the following day.

We woke on Saturday to cloudy, misty, foggy rain! We didn’t have to start climbing until mid afternoon so last minute missing kit was bought, mostly of the waterproof variety! More food stocked up and packed in, we became very imaginative in finding all the space we could, you’d be surprised by how much room there is under the passenger seats of a people carrier…

Once kitted out with waterproofs, tracker bars, camel packs and sweets, off we set up Ben Nevis at 4pm. Conditions were fair and after about an hour and a half we even found ourselves losing layers and climbing in T-shirts.  Two hours in after a quick pit stop and look at the view we ventured in to the cloud… The path on the way up BN changes at different bits, from climbing fairly steep rock to more ‘path’ sections but once you get through the cloud it all changes to being a grey rocky surface all the way up to the top.  I can only explain it as what I’d expect the moon to look like!

Whilst climbing we met quite a few other groups who were doing the same 3 peaks in 24 hours, it becomes apparent that everyone encourages each other by saying how far you’ve still got to go, the ‘your nearly there only about 20minutes your doing really well’ being very encouraging the, ‘you’ve got about 1.5hours’ not so encouraging – One climber being told ‘you should have lied’ by one of our team.

On reaching the summit of Ben Nevis, the feeling of Euphoria was amazing! Topped when we were up there with the clouds parting and the sun shining through, the view was one of the most amazing I’ve ever seen and will never forget.  It’s FREEZING up there and as beautiful as it is you don’t want to hang around so a quick photo shoot, found our woolly hats and gloves and back down we headed.  All in high spirits we chatted our way down for the first hour.  As the light started to dim and head lights were donned our pace slowed, my head torch decided it didn’t like its batteries much so very kindly I was given Grah’s which had the strongest light so I was put to the front of the train (can you see how things might go a little wrong at this point!!). We kept up good time and pace until I missed a turn and continued taking them down the wrong track.  Thankfully this was noticed after only about 10mins… back up we went… Now dark and getting cold, everyone was just looking forward to reaching the car!  Which on arrival we found to have been pre heated, with hot chocolates waiting to greet us, thanks to our brilliant driver!   No time for hanging about a quick change out of Kit and into the car for the 5.5hour drive to Scarfell Pike in Cumbria, England.

Mostly, everyone slept on this leg of the journey; eye masks donned, ear plugs plugged and pillows propped up against luggage to make a ‘comfy’ resting place!  A fairly dull part of the journey for our driver but he did a sterling job making up for some of our lost time.

A three thousand, two hundred and nine foot mountain to climb, its 3am, outside the window its driving rain and pitch black, sound like fun??  On arrival at the car park we bumped in to a couple of the other teams from BN who had turned back due to the poor conditions… not us though…

On went the kit, full waterproofs this time, already wet as we had to get dressed outside the car… Hoods up and off we went… More other teams turning back I remember phrases like ‘visibilities too poor’, ‘rivers rising high’, ‘the river you cross is running too fast, you wont get back over’. Did this put us off? You gotta be kidding… on we went… Driving rain, black and now just a bit of fog to help us along the way!  We crossed the river… they were right, it was running fast, we lost the path and started to climb vertically… Thank God for GPS and Graham – the team work these two did was amazing and I’m very grateful to them both, due to their strong bond we dodged a sheer cliff face and found the path!

The top of Scarfell Pike.  We really did not hang around up there very long. We had to turn our backs to the wind as it made the rain coming straight at you feel like saucers of water hitting you smack in the face!

On our decent from the summit of Scarfell Pike it started to get light and the rain calmed. About 20 minutes down my knee went, packed up and decided to take up camp on the side of the mountain. So for the next 2 ½ hours down it was a mental battle of concentration on getting down through the pain barrier, which I did, mostly due to the great support of the rest of my team.  So as not to be left behind on the moments I needed to stop (something I found out not to be productive as starting to walk again after stopping was agony!) Grah very kindly took up the back of the train so a big thank you to him for taking the pressure off and a big thank you to Lans and Ockie for their patience and reassurance.

Safely back at the warmed car, with hot chocolate at the ready we set off for the final mountain, Snowdon in the North West of Wales. With really bad weather now we had to drive through some fairly poor conditions which didn’t help with our time but our driver did an amazing job driving through sheets of rain. I think we mostly all ate on this journey… the delicious granola bars donated by Ottolenghi were definitely munched, along with Marmite sandwiches and pesto pasta!!

General conclusion on arriving at Snowdon was that I’d have to sit this one out, unless we fancied giving mountain rescue something to do!  So I watched the wrapped and waterproofed up three remaining team, trudge off up Snowdon in the rain, the wind had got worse in Wales and they were at points having to concentrate on not getting blown off the mountain.  But with miserable weather to contend with, lack of sleep and just pure exhaustion, they did it!! AMAZING!

We completed the challenge in 25.5hours so a little over time, but taking everything into account I think we did amazingly well.

I’m sure you’ve all had enough of my waffling buy now… so I wont go into details of the car journey home !

THANK YOU to all of you who sponsored me (I’ve raised way over the target I wanted to achieve.)  Any more donations would be hugely appreciated by the School, my just giving page is still open so please go to…

www.justgiving.co.uk/eugenie-konig

Thank you, thank you, thank you for sponsoring The Dyslexia Teaching Trust. Some of the money raised has already gone towards helping 3 Adults and 4 Children who are being assessed by the school at the moment.  I’m going to be keeping in touch with the school and they will be keeping me up to date with where the money is going.

It was an amazing experience and something I’m so pleased to have done for a great cause…

Love Eugenie x

P.S I’m going back to take on Snowdon in April next year!

Half-term Course:

Monday 25th – Thursday 28th October

9:30am – 11.30am

Christmas Holiday Course:

Monday 20th – Thursday 23rd December

9:30am – 11.30am

For details please email: Sally Wright on swatherapy@sky.com

Former pupil takes on ‘Three Peaks’ Challenge.

Some of you may have had the pleasure of receiving my multi coloured letters at school… others of you who did not receive those delights will have at some stage received an email or two from me and somewhere along the line you will now have become aware of my rather imaginative spelling…

Some may say it’s endearing and yes I definitely play on it occasionally, but for the most part it is quite frustrating…

Dyslexia is something they realised I had when I was 11 and once noted I spent many a lunch hour having to trek off to “Extra English” sitting in a room looking at cards saying city, centre, cycle, “s”,  I’m not sure if it made a huge difference to my spelling and reading – there wasn’t a very wide understanding of the difficulties then (I’m old now!) but in the vain hope that I can make it a little bit easier for another child at school now who is struggling to get to grips with their reading, writing, grammar, maths, there and their and hear and here, and if I can save them that frustration emotion of constantly being corrected then I’m going to try!

SO…. I’m climbing the 3 peaks in September with Alannah and Graham.  The idea is to climb the 3 highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales in 24 Hours… Having never been very keen on sport and my fairly bad vertigo it should be an interesting 24 hours!!

The charity I’m going to be doing this for is The Dyslexia Teaching Centre.  It’s a school in central London I went to myself in my school holidays. I went back to visit the other day to see how it was progressing and although it has come on leaps and bounds from the one room it was when I went there, it still needs as much charitable support as possible. I would be hugely grateful for anything you could donate to what I think is a very good charity and worthy cause…

To sponsor me please click here.

If you would like to send a cheque please make it out to The Dyslexia Teaching Centre and send to:

Eugenie Konig, 12 Symons Street, London, SW3 2TJ

Thank you all lots…

Eugenie x

A wonderful evening was had by all at the magical summer production of  Die Fledermaus presented by the Pavilion Opera and generously hosted by Mr and Mrs Gareth Quarry at Montrose House, Petersham.  Thanks to our generous sponsors and everyone involved, especially those who came to watch and listen. We raised a fantastic amount of money for this vital fund which will enable us to provide support to our local schools and communities starting with a Saturday club for dyslexic children.