Counting down the days

Modern Joinery founder and Kelly’s Heroes Climb Kilimanjaro organiser, Sarah Ball, gives her thoughts about the climb with just over three weeks to go until they set off on the challenge of a lifetime.

EEEK! There’s just over three weeks to go before the Kelly’s Heroes Climb Kilimanjaro team sets off from Heathrow.

In January 2023, I first put the call out on LinkedIn. I had no idea who would be joining – but knew that if we could get a team together, we could have an adventure of our lives and raise shed loads of money for Kelly’s Heroes.

I was not wrong. As I write, we are a super strong team, and we are ready to go. We are fully prepped with training and kit, vaccines up to date and visas sorted.

My allies on the mountain are: first and foremost Andy Ball who is my husband, founder and co-director of Balls2 Marketing and Founder Director of the Joinery Network; Aly Westbrook from FrameXpress; Andrew Charlesworth from Profine – who is splitting his pot between 2 charities – Harry’s Pals and Kelly’s Heroes; Baz Halpin from UAP; Carl Finch from Adapt Displays Retail Manufacturing; Dan Mason from Safeguard Glass; Gareth Jones from Solar Fabrications and FENSA; Gareth Green AKA Greenie at machinery manufacturer Stuga; Ian Ward from CNC Recycling; Lucy Daniels and Mark Towers both from DoorCo; Nat Weaver from Ashfen Windows; Rob Page also from Safeguard Glass, and Tristan Scofield from National Glass Association of America.

I want to say thank you to each and every team member who has joined along the way. You are all inspirational and I can’t wait to share the experience of climbing Kilimanjaro with you.

You have all gone above and beyond with fundraising for the PiGs Charity of the Year Kelly’s Heroes, who will get a minimum of £50,000. The money you have raised will be used to deliver services fast to people who present to the charity at the critical time, or hopefully sooner, but also to support family and friends of those who have lost a loved one to suicide. For every person who dies by suicide, there are 135 more who struggle with the loss. What Kelly’s Heroes does is remarkable. They help directly, they signpost, and they educate. Every penny helps.

The reason people know about the charity and have donated is because we are climbing Kilimanjaro. Without the challenge, this simply would not happen.

With the challenge in mind, we are four weeks away from setting off. Day 1 and 2 are spent travelling to Africa. Day 3 we get going. Pole, pole (slowly, slowly) is what we are going to be told, as we climb for 5 days, acclimatising all the time. It’s not the walk that will get any of us – we have all trained above and beyond to do the mileage and the climbing – but the altitude can affect any or all of us at any point over 3,000m – which we hit on our first day of the challenge.

Over the six days we are on the mountain, we will experience changes in temperature from plus 25 degrees to minus 15, so there’s a lot of kit needed to keep us protected from sun, wind, rain and cold. On the day of the summit, we will be getting up around midnight to climb the last section in the dark. If it all goes to plan, we will reach the top for sunrise, and fingers crossed the weather is on our side so we can see the curvature of the earth. We will aim to get you up to date news as we go, but the signal is pretty poor on Kilimanjaro. If we are radio silent for a few days, don’t worry. We will be shouting about it when we get back!!!

Thank you to everyone who has already donated, and if you’d still like to, here’s the link to the team page https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/kellysheroesclimbkilimanjaro