Sarah Reid, a physiotherapist at Perth Royal Infirmary, and Deborah Hair from near Brechin and currently doing a Masters at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, both successfully completed their ascent of Kilimanjaro, raising to date an awesome £8,710 for Brain Tumour Research. This is a fitting tribute to Sarah’s mother who lost her battle with a brain tumour earlier this year.

Deborah commented: “The summit day was really tough – we started the final ascent at midnight during a thunder, lightning and snow storm with just our head torches to light the way (in between bolts of lightning). As you can imagine, it was all very dramatic and exciting! At that altitude the lack of oxygen meant we had less sleep and had lost our appetites, so we were really running on empty. We were lucky, however, not to have suffered any serious altitude sickness, which is all too common.”

Sarah continued the story: “The storm finally abated and we were above cloud level to enjoy a beautiful sunrise. Reaching the summit was an amazing experience, albeit an exhausting one. It was a fantastic moment that we will never forget and it was really down to all the support and generous sponsorship we have received that helped us to keep going. To date our sponsorship total has topped £8,700, an overwhelming total and we cannot express how grateful we are to everyone who has sponsored us”.

Brain tumours kill more children and people under the age of 40 than any other cancer, yet just 70p in every £100 of national cancer spending goes on brain tumour research. It costs £2,740 to fund one day of research at a dedicated brain tumour centre of research, so Sarah and Deborah’s ascent of Kilimanjaro has already raised enough to fund three full days of research. If you would like to help make the total four days of research, please go to www.justgiving.com/Sarah-DeborahKilimanjaroClimb

For more information on the work of Brain Tumour Research please go to www.braintumourresearch.org

In the photo, Deborah is shown on the left and Sarah on the right.