Success on Snowdon
At 5:15am on Friday 15 members of the Yeovil Round Table left Yeovil Hire Centre for their destination, Snowdonia. As part of their plan to raise £20,000 for St. Margaret's Somerset Hospice the lads had set themselves the challenge of driving to Snowdonia, carrying a five foot table up Mount Snowdon, having a meal then carrying the table back down again in just 10 hours.
Relying on the natural navigational talents of Bangor born, veteran member Rob Smith and despite a diversion caused by an unexpected road closure, they arrived in Llanberis just after 10am. After a quick cuppa and a change of footwear the guys set off from the foot of Mount Snowdon at 10:38am with the table carried on a pole through the middle of the table.
Unbeleivably the first person that they passed threw some money in the collection bucket and announced that her and her family were visiting from Yeovil!
As the fitter members pushed ahead the stragglers benefited by their impressive performance as the obviously impressed public continually dropped money into the collection buckets.
At 12:05 they reached the half way point and at 1:11pm 5 members of the team reached the summit with the table, chairs, food and champagne. Gradually all the remaining members arrived at the summit and with cheers from the surrounding public, sat down at the table for food and champagne. After photos and more generous donations it was time to head back down. With less than 1hour and 10min to go it was going to be hard going to complete the challenge on time.
With a fair share of blisters and aching bodies the descent began. Again the fittest members pushed ahead and all went well until Dave Studley got a sudden cramp, fell over and sustained a terrible gash to the knee. In fact the cut was horrible that the photo was felt too horrific to put on the blog. Dave was looked after by Mark Porter as Steve Newman, Andy Parker, Tom Holden and oldest member of the team Rob Smith pushed on and actually ran the last half an hour. Amazingly having descended the mountain in just 58 minutes these four guys completed the task in 9 hours and 48 minutes.
With more money collected during a "quiet" drink in the bar afterwards and into the early hours, over £300 had been collected in the bucket. With online donations heading for £3200, donations from family, friends and local businesses including £1000 from Lloyds Bank, the final sum raised is expected to be around £5,500!
It's not too late to donate either online or offline. You can look at the photos in the gallery or read our progress in the blog.