Lets talk about the morning before the hike! We woke up bright and early and found ourselves being spoilt rotten by Shelagh and David. They had set out the table beautifully, with the most gorgeous crockery! It was a bit to early for us to have a ‘full english breakfast’ – the halal version of course, so we had some toast and tea and off we went. It might be a good bit of addition to know that there are two kind of hikers: 1. Eat-if-you-must like my husband, and 2. Eat-all-you-can like yours truly! The hosts offered advice on hiking gear and preferred routes.

As we sat in the car to set off, we noticed David coming out and gesturing for us to stop. I wondered what was going on… With my jacket in his hand, I soon realised that i must have left the bloody thing in their house! *face-palm* Can’t take me anywhere!

Arriving at the base of Scafell Pike, the sun was shining, the dogs were running and my heart was racing. I even needed to have a nervous loo break as we arrived. ONE WORD – actually two – NEVER AGAIN! The portable loo cabins smelt so bad, I was physically sick. I soon recovered though! The National Heritage bloke on site told us that he had cleaned them earlier in the morning; I guess a lot of people had had to go for their nervous loo breaks!

We stopped number of times and noticed a father and a son; dressed like two men on the mission, with their hats, map and compass. They were attempting to take a selfie before I offered to take their picture, which of course went down really well as they were over the moon. We then got chatting and the father told us that he was from London, but was spending the weekend with his son to spend some quality time together. I praised the young boy on how well he was doing and off they went. This reminded me a little bit of the film Pursuit of Happiness. Don’t ask why. Perhaps the father and son story? Their unique relationship and the father aspiring to do what’s best for his son? Inspirational indeed. And I am sorry I didn’t get a picture of them for you you guys as you would have known where i was coming from!

Overcoming fears! YASSSS!

As we continued walking up this gigantic mountain (well it is THE tallest peak in England after all), we came across a gigantic Husky. Now, I am PETRIFIED of dogs, it’s an Asian thing i think, we are all bloody shit scared of dogs (Ahmed strongly disagrees though and thinks it’s all in my head!). I just don’t know what on earth to do when they’re near us and have been suffering from a ‘dog-phobia’ for quite some time. Actually that’s a blog for another time! Moving on, this dog was absolutely gorgeous to look at and I really wanted to feel whether he was as fluffy as he looked. I then whispered to Ahmed ‘I really want to touch him’ and before he could reply, I went running up to the owner and asked her if I could touch the dog. Overjoyed, she said of course I could and so I did it. I decided to stop over thinking and touched this enormous dog called ‘Max’. And yes, he really was as fluffy and soft as he looked. So this was one mission accomplished, so i felt good already!  Seriously though, have you seen the size of that Husky?!

Mickledore Route!

We we walked a bit further up and decided to go towards the shortest route over Mickledore and past Scafell, the second highest mountain. This route was really tough on the feet and extremely dangerous if you struggle with balance.

The cliff scenery on Scafell is quite imposing and much more spectacular than Scafell Pike’s cliffs. Once on Mickledore near the first aid box, we took the route to the left and up to THE Pike. Going to the top, you have to cross huge, bulky and rocks which we did not feel were safe for everyone! The views are excellent!

We decided to have a break at this stop as we thought that the higher up we went, the winder and busier it would get. My legs felt like jelly at this point so I was over the moon at the thought of having a break and even more excited to eat my ‘walkers mix ups’ – chilli flavours of course! I quickly tucked into my bag of crisps and sipped on a chocolate flavoured protein shake. That exact moment was beautiful. It was beautiful until my husband decided to share my crisps and ended up dropping them all over! And guess what? Yep, I did not care at that point that they were on the floor. I scooped them up, put them back in the bag and ate them. The five second rule, right?

Getting to the top of Scafell was truly ‘Amaze-balls’ as one of my close friends often says!

Lol at the lads photo-bombing our photo in the background! It’s moments like these that make you chuckle in years to come and the exact reason why I finally decided to start a blog!

We asked a group of lads to take a photo of me and husband, despite the fact that we had already taken a gazillion photos from our (read: my) selfie stick. Little did we know that we would end up walking down with the same boys and have lots of ‘Bantz’ (banter) along the way. They were lovely group of friends who we talked to about life, travels and family. Isn’t it absolutely amazing how soon you find common ground with complete strangers? And how even fast forwarding the next few years of our lives, our memories of these strangers will stick with us forever? That’s DEEP! I even remember that one of them was called ‘Dom’. I recall this because one of them had a little slip and fell onto the ground. His friend then went running behind him, asking him if he was okay. This right there made me burst with joy. Just to see such empathy and love amongst friends.

So that was that. That was my journey to Scafell Pike. Tiring, yet terrific!

Remember, I am doing the Three Peaks Challenge to raise money for a charity called Human Appeal. It has been running for 25 years and the cause I am aiming to raise money for is called the ‘Winter Appeal Fund’. My aim is to raise £1000, in order for 10 Syrian families to get blankets and heaters for the winter. Please if you can, donate to this wonderful charity and help me make a difference. The Three Peaks so far has been tiring, exciting and beautiful. Not to forget how expensive it has been lol!

Here is the funding page you guys:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Natasha-Naveed1