Starring
Shirley Alcroft as ‘herself’

Andy Blanshard as ‘The man In The Uniform’
&
Teresa Alcroft aka Grandma as ‘The 89 Year Old lady’

Also starring: Tim Alcroft & Chris Alcroft as themselves.

* * * * * Location filming by Evie Blanshard aka ‘PIGLET’ * * * * *
* * * * * Directed by Georgie Blanshard * * * * *

& finally lets not foget
* * * * * CHIEF GRIP – Maggie Blanshard * * * * *

Congratulations to Shirley Alcroft for overcoming the biggest of her phobias (HEIGHTS) in order to complete an abseil for Bolton Hospice.  Shirley needed the help of a ‘Man in a Uniform’ in order to get her down the Abseil Platform, well that was her excuse!!  Shirley has raised over £500 for Bolton Hospice with the help & support of her family & friends, although the generosity of her biggest supporters meant that Manorlands Hospice also got £100 to help their cause.

One of Shirley’s biggest fans was her MUM-IN-LAW, who at the age of 89 has broken High Adventure’s ABSEIL RECORD, becoming the oldest person to abseil down the platform.  Tim & Chris Alcroft commented that:

Teresa was like a ‘rat up a drainpipe’

when ascending the ladder to get to the top of the platform, and then commented to her family that it was more difficult to clean her garage roof than climb onto our Abseil Platform (much to the worry of her family members – you should have seen their faces!!).
And Teresa does this twice a year AND without a safety rope (unlike our abseil platform).

in aid of Parkinson’s 

£2700 RAISED so far and rising!!!

How the event went:

What a superb weekend: the Casino Night was a stunning success, we had over 120 people there on the night, thanks very much to everyone who took part, either in entering the casino competition, working as dealers, running the roulette wheel, operating the bar, volunteering to provide and set up the sound system, decks, amps etc.  High Adventure (& Parkinsons) can’t thank everyone enough for making the CASINO NIGHT a stunning success.

Congratulations to Laura Jepson and Matt Ferguson for winning the Casino Night and then in giving their winnings back to Parkinsons!

The Climb Mt Everest in a day was also an incredible achievement, over 100 people came on the day to either climb, belay, take photos, support others and generally enjoy a fabulous atmosphere.  We managed to climb Mt Everest by 11:30am (yes all 8 848 metres), we then went on to climb K2 as well (the worlds 2nd highest mountain).

Some incredible individual efforts were made as follows:
Henry Exon, Jim Scott, Matt Stapley & David Maw all climbed the height of Ben Nevis, whilst
Neil Jackson and Kirsty Swan both comlpeted a climb with someone else on their back.
The youngest climber: Catrin Ferguson, aged 5 years and 5 days climbed to the halfway mark on the SLAB wall, whilst
The oldest climber:  Michael Jepson (who wouldnt give his actual age!) did 18 ascents, equating the height of one of the Great Pyramids.
The MAIN thing is that everyone really did well, climbed hard, had fun and did so much to help raise money for Parkinson’s.

Sunday 1st May.

12pm: Activities will be available, lead by our instructors, all activities will cost £10.  Your choices are:
High Ropes
Mountain Biking
Canyoning
Caving

 7pm: Casino Night, £10 to enter.
The bar will be open all night and the card & roulette tables will be open for 2 hours – at the end of the night whoever has the most ‘chips’ wins the cash prize of £100, 2nd place gets £50 and 3rd gets £20.

Anyone not living locally who wants to stay over are more than welcome to, its £10 for bed & breakfast (served at 8am).

Monday 2nd May.

9am:  Climb the height of Mt Everest commences.  All climbers coming to help achieve this are welcome to come along at anytime during the day to ‘do your bit’ for the target of 8 848 metres.

 What are we trying to do?  In a nutshell, we intend to climb the height of Mt Everest in a single day on our indoor climbing wall AND try and raise £5 000 for the Parkinson’s Disease Society.

What do we want?  We NEED you!  Quite simply we need as many people as possible to come and help us climb 8 848 metres and also to help with the fund raising too.  Our ‘Just Giving’ webpage is:

www.justgiving.com/ClimbMtEverestInAday

So all ‘climbers’ can direct their friends & family to the page to donate, rather than having to go round collecting cash.

Preceeding the ‘climbing event’, High Adventure will be hosting a CASINO NIGHT on Sunday 1st May – all profits to go to Parkinson’s too.  So watch this space for more details.

Here’s who’s coming & what they are doing:

Donate now by going to: http://www.justgiving.com/LandsEndtoJohnOGroatsERGOChallenge

The Challenge:  To ride 1400km (the distance of Lands End to John O Groats) in 11 hours on 4 ERGO bikes at Fitness First – Keighley on Saturday 8^th May 2010.

 Why?  To raise as much money as possible for Manorlands Hospice.  Our initial target is £1400 (£1 per kilometre), but the more the better, so please don’t hold back, ask everyone you know to sponsor you for as much as possible.

 Who is doing it:  Tim, David, Matt, Sara and as many others as we can rope in to help us to:

a)    ride the distance (it’s a very long way)

b)    raise as much money as possible to help us meet our target

 Why Manorlands Hospice?  From mine & David’s point of view its very personal as I am sure many of you are aware, but places like Manorlands Hospice rely very heavily on charity in order to provide the palliative care that is so desperately needed for so many people within our community.

Click here for the Telegraph & Argus article about the event.

Click here for the Yorkshire Post article about the event.

Our Team So Far! 

Our team’s personal distances were:

Thanks very much for all your hard work, as a team we managed to ride 1407.42km in 10 hours and 5 minutes and have currently raised £1050, we are still hoping to hit our target of £1400, so please keep giving if you can or badger others that you know to reward you for the hard work you put in.

Our team on the day:

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High Adventure Outdoor Education Centre Casino Night in aid of charity.

In 2010 High Adventure is concentrating predominantly on raising monies for 2 charities: Marie Curie Cancer Care and The Parkinson’s Disease Society.

A big thank you to everyone who came, over 70 of you, who helped raise £400 for The Parkinsons Disease Society and Marie Curie Cancer Care on Saturday 9th January.

Everyone had a fantastic time, all 4 Black Jack tables were full throughout the night, the 3 winners of the Casino Night were Chris Reade, Alex Masterson & Steve Stannard, although we are confident that the big winners were our 2 charities.

Thanks once again to all activity instructors, staff, frineds & supporters of High Adventure who came and made the night a huge success.

A team of 5 from High Adventure OEC once again challenged themselves in the annual Mountain of Hell race down the ‘Deux Alpes Glacier’ high in the French Alps. The team: Tim Ferguson, Mick Ellerton, Jon Robinson, Jon Beyer & Lawrence Baker all completed the Finale on Sunday, a fantastic achievement considering of the 550 competitors in this years race only 450 completed the 25km route.

Moneys raised so far is currently topping £5300, all monies are going to the Yorkshire Cancer Centre, anyone out there wishing to donate on behalf of the tem at High Adventure please either goto our Just Giving webpage or direct to the Yorkshire Cancer Centre.

The charity fund raising efforts dont just stop know and the team at High Adventure OEC will be returniung in 2010 to take on the worst that the Deux Alpes Galcier has to offer.

Video

Another event for next year is the inaugural Mountain Bike Festival weekend in Gisburn Forest, with races and fun rides for all levels and styles of riders from under 10′s 2km XC chaperones race to a downhill sprint to an open age XC mountain bike race. Keep an eye on the High Adventure website for more details.

October 2008 – Yorkshire Cancer Centre (reg Charity 1075308)

The first annual ‘bit of a do’ took place at Glusburn institute on Friday 10th October and was a resounding success. The evening began with the excellent local band Kelly’s Eye followed by an auction and raffle of donated prizes, such was the generosity of the donators and the bidders that we were able to raise a whopping £4500.

Special thanks must go to:

• Glusburn Institute for donating the hall
• All individuals and businesses who donated prizes
• The Auctioneer, Matthew Binns, who stepped in at the last moment and did a fantastic job
• The ‘A bit of a do!’ committee who freely gave up their time and energies for this worthy cause
• Everyone who came and supported the event, especially the volunteer bar staff
• The Wonder Women who ran the Tesco 10k at Castle Howard for Cancer Research UK and raised several thousand for the cause.

Following the success of ‘A bit of a do!!’ we are already talking about doing it again next year, so keep a space in your diary for ‘A bit of a do 2!!’

High Adventure Outdoor Education Centre has chosen the Parkinson’s Disease Society as its preferred charity for the year.

The target is to raise £3400 for Parkinson’s with a number of events planned throughout the year to help us reach this target.

Why £3400? The main focus is for some of the team at High Adventure Outdoor Education Centre to enter the Mountain of Hell 2008, which is a downhill Mountain Bike Race in Les Deux Alpes, France. The race starts on the glacier at an altitude of 3400 metres (hence the £3400 target) and finishes at 900 metres in the small village of Venosc having passed through Les Deux Alpes village.

The racers were: Tim Ferguson (Director), Mick Ellerton (Senior Instructor), Pete Oldam (Director), Jon Robinson & Jon Beyer. They were very well supported on all the training weekends by Chris Jepson (Director) & Gary Asquith.

High Adventure Outdoor Education Centre would also like to thank Ultimate Outdoors for their support and sponsorship of technical clothing for all the riders during the training and the race.

Who has / is sponsoring us? Thanks must go to an awful lot of people ranging from suppliers to High Adventure Outdoor Education Centre, staff at HA, friends & family of our staff and the wider community. Recently we have just held a truly successful CASINO NIGHT at High Adventure which raised £700, other events included an Australian themed quiz, coffee morning and old fashioned sponsor me for riding down the Mountain of Hell type requests.

Have a look at some of the links to get more of an idea of the 2008 Mountain of Hell:

http://www.bikes-oisans.com/alpes-mtb-cycling-events-50.html

The link below is the official results of the race, for those that can read French you will be able to see that Pete Oldam (one of the Directors at High Adventure) came last of those that complete the race, Pete came 274 out of 400. He was the only person to get a special mention (other than the winner) on the results page. Un grand bravo!

http://www.les2alpes.com/fr/ete/agenda/mountain-of-hell.html

Craven Herald Newspaper article about the race

Team tackles Mountain of Hell

11:47am Monday 11th August 2008

Five Craven men have ridden down the Mountain of Hell.

A team from the High Adventure Outdoor Education Centre in Cowling took up the challenge of doing the Mountain of Hell Bike Race in Les Deux Alpes, France, to raise money for the Parkinson’s Disease Society.

Starting at an altitude of 3,400 metres, the 25-kilometre route went over the snow and ice of a glacier, across rock and gravel and then down a steep track.

Of the 400 people that entered the race, only 274 completed it, but each of Craven’s five man team reached the bottom.

The riders, Tim Ferguson, Pete Oldam, Mick Ellerton, Jon Robinson and Jon Beyer, are aiming to raise £3,400 for the Parkinson’s Disease Society.

Mr Ferguson, director of High Adventure, said: “My father-in-law has been a sufferer for more than 14 years. We’re aiming to raise £3,400 because that was the altitude at the start of the race.”

So far the group has raised £2,500 and is hoping to raise the rest of the money at a casino night being held at the High Adventure Outdoor Education Centre next Saturday, August 23.

Tickets are £10 and are available from High Adventure on 01535 630044.

Keighley News article about the race

Tim to ride down hell mountain

From the archive, first published Thursday 3rd Jan 2008.

Mountain bike riders are being challenged to tackle one of the most demanding rides in the sport’s calendar – and raise cash for disabled people at the same time.

Tim Ferguson, an outdoor education instructor, is to take on The Mountain of Hell in his bid to help the battle against Parkinson’s Disease.

He has been inspired to compete in the three day challenge in Les Dieux Alpes, France, by his father-in-law, Mel Jones, who has suffered from the disease for about 13 years.

“When I met my wife, Lyn, about 13 years ago, her father had just been diagnosed. He was suffering mildly then but it is a nasty, progressive illness,” he said.

Tim, who is a director of the High Adventure Outdoor Education Centre, at Cowling, is aiming to bank £3,400.

And to help him hit the mark, he is challenging other mountain bike enthusiasts – he is looking for about nine or ten – to join him in the venture next July.

“The more of us there are, the more likely we are to reach the target,” said Tim, 37.

“The race, which attracts both amateur and professional riders, sets off from the glacier at 3,400 meters and finishes at about 600 metres.

“I want to raise one pound for every one metre of the 3,400 metres,” said Tim.

“Within the mountainbike sport, people say if there is one challenge to do it is this one – single track down hill from this altitude makes it not for the faint hearted.

“I also want to make it a bit more exciting for people who sponsor me as well.

“Instead of just begging for money from people, they will automatically get entered into a sweepstake – the prizes are coming from organisations which are already supporting me.

“I’m asking my sponsors to guess how long it will take me to complete the race and the number of crashes I have.”

The challenge is restricted to 400 riders and is over three days.

There are races on the first two days, in which riders qualify to take part in the final on the third over the 25 kilometre course.

Tim, who has a 19-month-old daughter, Catrin, has already secured support from Fitness First, in Keighley, Aire Valley Cycles, in Keighley, Science in Sport and from his own company.

Anyone wishing to join him or wants to sponsors the challenge can contact him on 078878 40499, 01535 630044 or on info@highadventureoec.co.uk.

From the archive

http://www.keighleynews.co.uk

© Newsquest Media Group 2008

Have a look at some video clips of the race:

• Video 1
• Video 2
• Video 3

If you want to help our cause then please follow the link below and donate online (all monies goes direct to Parkinson’s)

http://www.justgiving.com/timferguson1

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