Jack Dainton, from Daneshill School, shares his story of the Year 8 group who successfully completed the finale challenge of their Adventure and Leadership Course by finishing the Three Peaks Challenge in support of Variety.

£1,100. This was the amazing amount of money Year 8 raised for Variety, the Children’s Charity, by completing the Three Peaks Challenge earlier this term.

The three Peaks Challenge – the grande finale of our two year Adventure and Leadership Course. We had trained for this moment, planned for this moment, raised sponsorship for this moment and suddenly it was upon us! Could we manage it?

The weather forecast was not great and we realised very quickly the only way we were going to complete it was together as a team.

We packed the minibus early on Monday morning and set off on a twelve hour journey to Scotland. Spirits were high on the journey until about five minutes in when we realised we would be extremely bored for the next 11 hours and 55 minutes! However, we survived with the help of our ipods and a bit of team spirit.

On Tuesday, we were ready and raring to go up our first mountain: Ben Nevis. It was very tough and by the end of it our legs were really hurting. There was snow on the top and horrible sleet on the way down. We were all were pleased to be in the minibus on our way to our next youth hostel in the Lake District and the next challenge.

On Wednesday we got up really early and set off to climb Scafell Pike. It was a really sunny day and great fun. We even got to scramble up the famous Corridor Route and had a swim in an extremely cold mountain plunge pool.

Next, on Thursday, we climbed Snowdon. This was amazing but very tough. We had another scramble, but this one was longer, steeper and a lot harder. After this long scramble we reached the summit. Hurray!

However, our spirits were quickly drowned because, on the way down, it poured with rain and we arrived back at base cold, wet and hungry. Spirits rose again quickly however as we reached the bottom of the mountain because we had finished the challenge! We had achieved our aim, and it was a fabulous feeling!

The next day we went to Cadbury World! We visited the biggest Cadbury shop in the world and bought as much chocolate as we could, a pretty good way to replenish our energy levels!

We couldn’t have done it without the help and guidance of Mrs Caratelli and Mr. Thacker. Thank you so much to both of them.

What a fantastic achievement – congratulations to the team and thank you to everyone at Daneshill School for your support!