Peaks for Purpose: Ten Year 11s, 38km, and Two Charities Close to Home

Encouraging girls to take on genuine challenges, physical, intellectual or otherwise, has long been part of life at LEH, and fundraising for good causes sits right alongside it. Whether a sponsored silence, a bake sale in the quad, or an ambitious walk dreamed up by a group of friends who should probably have known better, most of us who came through LEH can remember at least one occasion when we signed up for something slightly mad in the name of a good cause. Building that culture takes more than one big event a year: it relies on pupils choosing, again and again, to put themselves forward for something difficult in support of somebody else. This piece, written by a current Lower Sixth pupil, is one small example of that culture in action, and a reminder of why it matters that it continues. 

By Carla, Lower Sixth 

Some things about LEH never seem to change, whichever decade your schooldays were in: the scramble for tuck shop favourites, the never-ending sign-up sheets outside the hall, and a certain determination or stubbornness in the girls who go here. I'm Carla, now in the Lower Sixth, and this summer that stubbornness took ten of us, then still in Year 11, up several peaks over 38km, in Yorkshire Three Peaks (Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside, and Ingleborough) all in aid of HANDS and Crossroads Care. 

You might well know both charities already. They've supported, and been supported by, the LEH community for a long time, and this year it was our turn to do our bit. 

We trained properly for it, mostly around Richmond Park, on weekends that involved a lot of blister plasters and an unreasonable amount of discussion about what snacks to pack. It felt slightly mad at the time, given that none of us had walked anything close to this distance before. 

By 7am on the day itself, most of us were quietly nervous. We'd done the training, sorted our kit, planned our meals down to the last flapjack, but there's nothing quite like climbing into a minibus knowing you won't be home again until you've covered 38km on foot. 

It wasn't an easy start. Thick fog sat over the first few peaks, so we were scrambling over rocky, uneven ground barely able to see each other, let alone any kind of view. "Keep going, it's for charity" got said a lot that morning, usually through gritted teeth. 

Before the hike, we'd all done some reading on the charities, partly out of curiosity and partly so the whole thing felt like it was for something real, not just an excuse for a long walk and a few blisters. 

HANDS (Help A Neighbour in Distress Scheme) is based in Twickenham and supports local people who would otherwise be left with limited independence, or forced to pay for help they can't easily afford. It's a free, neighbourly kind of service, the sort that's easy to overlook until you realise how much people depend on it. 

Crossroads Care, our second charity, is part of a wider UK network of respite care providers, with a branch covering Richmond and Kingston upon Thames. Every donation we brought in went straight to supporting local carers. 10.6 million isn't quite the number of steps we took that day, though we weren't far off (my rough count put us at just under a million between us). It's actually the estimated number of unpaid carers across the UK, many of them stretched far too thin, still doing everything they can for the people who depend on them. 

We got back with sore feet, more blisters than we'd like to admit, and a real sense of having done something worthwhile. If any of this sounds familiar (the training walks, the last-minute kit panic, the sheer bloody-mindedness of signing up for something like this), then you'll know exactly why we did it.