Organisers of the ‘Climb a Mile’ charity event, which took place at the recent Forest Festival at Scone Palace, have presented a cheque for £2,000 to Help for Heroes. Pictured are James McDougall, co-ordinator of the International Year of Forests for Forestry Commission Scotland (left) and Paul Hanson, Arboricultural Association Scotland (centre), presenting the fundraising cheque to Mike Dickinson, County Co-ordinator for Help for Heroes in Perthshire (right) at Scone Palace.

Despite the interesting conditions of a typical Scottish summer (torrential rain on the Saturday with bright sunshine followed by heavy showers later on Sunday) the team soldiered on managing just over 800m on day one in the worst of the weather. Day two saw the old lags back from day one with some fresh faces turning up to help out, and the marvellous ‘Boyle Bar-B-Q’ back again to keep spirits raised, even the chef managed 60m of the climb in between peeling onions and flipping burgers.  I’m not sure if keeping moral high with steak sandwiches, chicken tikka and gallons of tea was conducive to climbing high, however we did manage to complete the 30m climb 55 times! Andrew Jenkins made the most number of individual climbs with a total of 7 (210m).

The charity climb and Forest Festival were part of a series of events taking place to celebrate the International Year of Forests 2011, which aims to raise awareness of sustainable management, conservation, and development of all types of forests. Of course not everyone was able to make a physical contribution; we are helping to raise funds for Help for Heroes and supporting the climbers in doing that is vitally important. For those who missed the Scone event, or for who this is news please visit our web site www.climbamile.com to get involved and/or to donate on-line.

Thanks to Kevin Wholey and Richard and Matthew Light for cleaning the tree prior to the climb, to Elspeth and Margo at Scone Palace for all their help, to James McDougall at Forestry Commission Scotland without whom we would not have a web site, to Richard Bryant for securing and paying for the event insurance, to Brenda, Eric, Keith, Lomond and Margo for collecting money and keeping count during the event, to Mike Dickinson from H4H, to Stephen Burgess for creating and continuing to provide support for the Climbamile website, to Andy Burgess for his advice with event publicity, to Jamie Boyle, our own catering hero (ex parachute regiment) and of course many thanks to the guys who climbed the mile: Ali Baxter, Jamie Boyle, Mike Charkow, Ron Clowes, Mark Foster, Joe Fulton, Paul Hanson, Andrew Jenkins, Craig Knellar, Euan Maccormick, Alan MacTaggart, Mark McKenzie, Charlie Matthieson, Adam Reidi and Chris Simpson.

Paul Hanson

AA Scottish Branch Chairman