Desborough firefighters raise £1,500 and counting with Snowdon climb

Three Desborough firefighters have helped raise more than £1,500 for charity after scaling Mount Snowdon.

On-call firefighters Mel Barker and Ian Jarvis, and wholetime firefighter Stuart Tomlin all climbed the second highest peak in the UK last Tuesday (August 24) in a bid to raise funds for The Fire Fighters Charity.

The charity helps to rehabilitate injured firefighters and provide physical and mental support and counselling for members of the fire family.

Mel Barker said: “We support the charity all year around with things like car washes. But it’s been tough for the charity with the pandemic and they don’t get Government funding, so we wanted to do something a bit bigger – and we thought we could climb Snowdon in our firefighter gear.

“Thankfully it wasn’t too taxing as we have to be pretty fit for our job. But we’ve had a few people ask whether we carried the oxygen cylinders, maybe that’s something to think of as a challenge for next year!”

After reaching the 1,085 metre high peak of Snowdon in good time, the trio even managed to find time on the way back down to help administer first aid to a member of the public who had fallen over on the mountain side.

“We had met a girl who was climbing on her own at the top,” explains Mel. “She managed to take some pictures for us and as we were climbing down we saw her fall down in front of us.

“It looked quite nasty, so we helped to give her first aid and we went down the rest of the mountain with her to make sure she was fine.”

You can still donate to their charity effort by visiting www.justgiving.com/fundraising/desboroughstation