I have Parkinson's disease. I was excluded from the challenge I'd trained for, paid for, and fundraised for — on the evening I was already on the train to the start line. I did it anyway. Independently. With a group who believed in me. On the 9th of August 2024. What happened on those mountains is something no exclusion letter can take away. And what came next — a children's book series for kids with disabilities, born from those summits — is something I never planned, but will never stop being grateful for.

There is a particular kind of cruelty in being told you are excluded from something you've already paid for, already prepared for, already given months of your life to — and being given no warning, no conversation, and no real reason that holds up.

I had signed up for the National Three Peaks Challenge. I'd paid the entrance fee. I'd raised well above the minimum fundraising target in just one month — every pound going to a charity I believed in. If I could have chosen freely, I would have raised every penny for Parkinson's UK — the charity that exists for people like me.

I'd been open about participating. It had been discussed in team meetings. People had sponsored me. People were proud of me.

And then I left my job. And then I was excluded from the challenge — not on the day I left, but on the evening I was already on the train to Chester, to start the next morning. The grounds: no longer an employee.

No one told me this was a rule when I signed up. No one told me when I asked, before I left, whether I could still participate. The person I asked came back with a confirmation that I could. And then, with eight months of preparation behind me, I received the call.

I spoke with the event organisers directly. Their position was clear: they had no issue with me taking part. This was a charity event. But they were acting on behalf of their client and had to follow instructions.

I understood the mechanics. I didn't accept the outcome.

So I found my own place on the challenge. I joined a group of independent participants, booked my own travel, and set off on the 9th of August 2024 — with Parkinson's disease in my nervous system, a borrowed Marathon des Sables backpack on my shoulders, and two young children at the station seeing me off.

That image — kneeling on the station floor, their arms around me, my wife's eyes telling me everything she couldn't say — is the one I carried with me up every mountain.

We left Fort William before six in the morning. The mountain was already visible from the street — vast, unhurried, entirely indifferent to what any of us were about to attempt.

I was wearing loaned MDS gear. The same kit that had covered 100 miles across the Sahara no more than four months earlier. Ben Nevis isn't a desert — it's wet, cold, rocky, and unforgiving in a completely different way — but the principle is the same: the mountain doesn't care about your story. It only cares about your next step.

Parkinson's affects balance. It affects coordination. On uneven terrain at altitude those effects don't announce themselves politely — they arrive in moments: a foot that lands slightly wrong, a hand that grips the pole harder than intended, a pause on the path to recalibrate that no one else needs to take.

I took those pauses. And I kept going.

The numbers tell part of the story. What the numbers don't tell you is what it feels like to stand on the summit of the highest mountain in Britain, in cloud and cold, arms raised, with a group of people around you who showed up to be part of something that almost didn't happen. You can't quantify that. You just remember it forever.

This is the image that stays with me most.

Scafell Pike. Summit reached at 22:16 on the 10th of August. Headtorch on. Pitch darkness all around. The GPS shows 4.94 miles, 4 hours and 35 minutes, 906 metres of ascent — started at 20:02, which means we were climbing England's highest mountain entirely at night.

There is that photograph from that moment. Just me, lit by the headtorch, looking directly at the camera. No summit euphoria. No arms raised. Just a face that has been moving for sixteen hours, that has a disease that never sleeps, that is somewhere on the side of a mountain in the dark — continuing.

Someone captioned it simply: Scafell Pike · 10/08/2024 · 22:16.

That's enough. That tells the whole story.

Between the peaks there was banter, shared stories, everyone telling their reason for being there — the quiet, essential stuff that doesn't make the highlights reel. Sleep. Food. Movement. Repeat. That's the challenge, stripped back to its core.

By Snowdon, something had shifted. Not the body — the body was doing what it always does after two mountains and a night of driving between countries: negotiating, protesting, continuing anyway. But the calculation had changed.

The GPS for Snowdon shows 2.96 miles, 1 hour and 42 minutes, 247 metres of ascent, starting from Llanberis at 06:21 on the 11th of August. The numbers are smaller than the other two peaks. But they represent something larger — because by this point, what the body has already done makes the next step the hardest and the most meaningful one.

Snowdon was where I understood something about Parkinson's and about challenge that I'd been building towards without knowing it: the disease is not the obstacle. The disease is part of the story. And the story is: I went anyway.

There is a photograph from Llanberis at the end — the group, back on the street after it was done. One person lying completely flat on the pavement. A medal visible. Snowdon in the background. People who have been awake for the best part of two days, wearing their tiredness like a badge, because it is one.

I didn't complete the Three Peaks in the way the traditional rules define completion. My Parkinson's placed real limits on parts of the challenge. I made decisions along the route that were about safety and sustainability, not defeat. And I stand by every one of them.

But I did something more important: I showed up. After being told I couldn't. After being excluded from the version of this challenge I had prepared for. After eight months of fundraising, training, and navigating a progressive neurological disease. I showed up. I moved. I finished.

The total across all three mountains: approximately 17 miles walked. Approximately 2,495 metres of ascent. Approximately 4,456 calories burned. One person with Parkinson's disease. 24 hours. Three countries. Three peaks.

No permission required. Just grit.

When I came back from those mountains, I had something I hadn't had before: proof. Proof that a body that doesn't always cooperate — that shakes and stumbles and needs extra time — can still go somewhere extraordinary.

My children were with me at the start. They watched me leave with a bag bigger than I was ready for, into something I wasn't sure I could do. And when I came back, I wanted to give them — and every child like them, every child who has ever been told their path is harder, slower, quieter — something they could hold.

So I wrote a book.

If you know a child who moves through the world differently — whose body tires sooner, whose path takes longer, whose journey is quieter but no less powerful — this series was written for them. From a mountain. With grit.

I am not telling you to climb a mountain. I am not telling you to push through pain or ignore your limits. Parkinson's is serious, and the version of 'inspiration' that ignores that does more harm than good.

What I am telling you is this: the disease does not get to decide what you attempt. It only gets to influence how you do it. And sometimes — often — the how is the whole point.

I went to those mountains for everyone who has been handed a diagnosis and then handed a list of things they can no longer do. I went for the person reading this in a waiting room. I went for the person who watched someone they love lose something to this disease.

And I'm going again. Because that's what Odyssey Camp Co is about. Not the perfect adventure. The real one.

What's your challenge?