“By the time we reached Ingleborough, some of the team were definitely looking peaky….”

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This week, we spent time talking to Kirsty Arnold, one of our fantastic business ambassadors from the Hickton Group, hearing about their amazing fundraising effort in aid of EyUp!.

Kirsty Arnold is the Digital Marketing Executive for the Hickton Group.  She joined shortly before the first Covid-19 lockdown and during her tenure, has already completed a rebrand for the company and helped the company navigate through the uncertainties of the pandemic. The Hickton Group are a multi-disciplinary business, offering consultancy services, including: Quality Site Inspections, Building Control Services, Energy Consultancy and Gas and Electrical audits.

Kirsty is a member of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) team, along with her colleagues Harriet Green (Marketing Communications Executive) Becci Hanson (Company Secretary), Laura Bradshaw (Commercial Director).  They decided that they wanted to support smaller, grass-root mental health charities and were pleased to find EyUp! doing fantastic work to support people with mental health difficulties, within the Yorkshire region.  During a CSR call, Kirsty mooted the idea of doing the Yorkshire Three Peaks 24-mile walk. She was surprised and pleased that six colleagues from the Bristol office immediately accepted the challenge, agreeing to leave the relatively flat Mendips and head north to take on the Three Peaks. They were joined by 10 other staff members, many of whom had spoken daily but had never met due to Covid-19 restrictions.

The business paid for all the walkers to stay in a youth hostel in Malham and after some wrangling with the carpark ticket machine, they started their walk from Horton-in-Ribblesdale at 7am, Saturday, 4th September.  Tackling the fairly steep Pen-y-Ghent Peak first, which posed a slight struggle for a few people dealing with the steepness and scrambling over what they may describe as boulders.  Nonetheless, in dry but misty weather conditions, the team progressed, scaling the long and steady Whernside ascent, followed by the very steep Ingleborough and then finishing with what felt like a very long walk back to Horton-in-Ribblesdale. Kirsty reported, with justifiable pride, that everyone completed the walk within 12 hours, she managed an admirable 11-hour finish time, whilst the fastest time from the group was just 9 hours – an incredible effort by everyone!

To celebrate their successful hike, the team reconvened at the closest pub to the finish line for a swift pint, followed by food and more drinks in a cosy pub next to the youth hostel.

Many of the team have decided to hang up their walking boots following the Three Peaks, however Kirsty and Harriet are more philosophical about taking on similar future fundraising challenges in different locations across the UK.

Is your business planning a staff fundraising event? You could join forces with staff from the Hickton Group. The Hickton CSR team are also looking for ways to involve the other 184 staff members who prefer the indoors to the great outdoors – an inter-company great EyUp! bake off challenge would be a mouth-watering way to launch 2022!

Interested? Contact Jana.harris@swyt.nhs.uk, EyUp! fundraising manager, for more information about the charity or to connect with the Kirsty at the Hickton Group.

“By the time we reached Ingleborough, some of the team were definitely looking peaky….”

time to read: 2 min