Marking two years since Peter Rochford's passing, a team from Rochfords Garden Machinery is taking on the Three Peaks Challenge this July.


The Rochford team

The Challenge

On the 4th of July seventeen members of the Rochfords team will be taking on the challenge of trying to climb the three peaks (Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon) within 24 hours including travel time.

They will start  the ascent to the summit of Ben Nevis on Saturday 4th at 5pm, a walk of around 19km (11.8miles) up to the summit of 1,344 meters (4,409 feet). Then back on the bus just after 10pm to drive to Scafell Pike to start the second walk/climb around 4am in the morning as the sun rises over the Lake District.

The second assent to the 978 meters (3,208 feet) summit is via a 14km (8.7 Miles) walk. They will then return to the bus by 10am on Sunday 5th of July to allow time to drive to the third and final summit of Snowden. In order to achieve the target of three peaks in 24 hours they will have approximately 4 hours to finish the final walk of 11km (6.8 miles) to the top of Snowdon at 1,085 meters (3,650 feet) and back to the base before 5pm on Sunday 5th of July.

In total the team will be walking 44km (27.3 miles) and climbing to a total height of 3,407meters (11,267 feet) hopefully -  within the 24 hours target they have set themselves.

Background

Lewis Anderson of Rochfords told Service Dealer, "For most of the team this is the first time that they have completed any type of hill walking and would never have dreamed of completing this type of challenge. At the start of 2015 there was talk around of some of the staff suggesting setting a challenge to complete in the coming year.

"Dibby Rochford and I were talking about the different challenges, focusing on the Three Peaks,and wanting to get a date in the diary. While looking for a weekend in summer we noticed that the 5th of July landed on a Sunday  - the date marking two years since Peters passing. Dibby felt this would be a fitting way to mark the date and would be a challenge that if Peter was here he would have been the first to sign up to and be walking around the office encouraging others to sign up and encourage them to do some more training.

"Quickly we realised that if anyone else at work was interested we would have a great opportunity to raise some awareness and also money for Bowel Cancer UK (the form of cancer Peter was diagnosed with). We decided on Monday we would ask all the staff if they would like to complete the challenge keeping the details very simple not mentioning the charity or it being on the 5th of July to influence anyone. We hoped to have a handful of people to join us. We never expected to have 15 staff say that they relished the challenge and were ready to get their walking boots on.

"We have representation from all 6 of our Area Sales Managers, Parts Department, Accounts, Operations, Warehouse and our own Retail Showroom meaning we have a great mix of characters and backgrounds on the team with an age range from 21 to 63! All the staff singed up to the event before they were aware the date would coincide with Peters passing showing their dedication to the challenge.

"This industry means a lot to our company and a huge amount to Peter personally. We realised by having a national challenge visiting all 3 parts of mainland Britain we could hopefully raise awareness and support from the whole industry.

We have set up a dedicated Just Giving page for the event (www.justgiving.com/RGM3Peaks) where people can visit to watch a small video about each of the individual team members personal motivation for the event, learn some more about the challenge and read our updates. Hopefully some of you will feel inspired or relate to the motivations we share and help us raise as much as possible to support the work done by Bowel Cancer UK.

"We have not set a target amount to raise for this event as every penny will be valued and help the charity a lot. Our aim is to raise as much as possible and hopefully appeal to a strong, connected and generous industry to support us. We would be extremely grateful for anyone reading this to help us on behalf of our industry to support Bowel Cancer UK and try reduce the number of men and women each year who lose their lives to this deadly diseases."

Watch the Rochford team video