7 mountains in 7 days for Refuge Charity

The News, Portsmouth

Transcript

00:00My name's Eugene. I live in the Portsmouth area and over the last eight years I've done

00:12eight different charity events and challenges for charity. The most recent one I climbed

00:19seven mountains in seven days in Ireland to raise money for there's a domestic charity

00:25refuge. Each mountain was dedicated to a female that had been through domestic violence or

00:31an abuse. Four of them unfortunately are no longer with us. Three of them had their lives

00:36taken by a partner or ex-partner. One of them unfortunately saw no way out and she committed

00:43suicide and the other three were dedicated to survivors. All the events I've done, as

00:53a lot of people will know, but some won't, I've done in the memory of my brother who

00:57was murdered. So every challenge I took on, every event I took on, I felt if I didn't

01:03succeed I was going to let my brother down. But I like to think that I kind of used that

01:09to drive me on and make me more determined to succeed. It was good to finally put all

01:19the preparation into action. It was dry weather, it was relatively sunny at the bottom. That

01:27did change the higher we got up. The interchangeable weather in Ireland is just, yeah, you can't

01:34predict it. But it was good, it was good to get there and finally get started. The first

01:43sort of three, four days were pretty much if we weren't climbing we were travelling.

01:48Because of the distance between them, there was no real time to sort of sit down, relax

01:54properly, you know, enjoy the local area. It was down from the mountain, travel to the

02:00next hotel, try and get something to eat, try and get some sleep and then go again the

02:05next day. I think it was the third day, we didn't get to the hotel until like 11 o'clock

02:11at night. So it wasn't just the sort of physical aspect, it was the mental aspect as well.

02:20You know, it could be nice and sunny, not necessarily hot, but nice and sunny and clear

02:24at the bottom. And as it, you know, changed, it was extremely wet, extremely foggy, extremely

02:31bad visibility and very cold. So it was kind of an additional challenge in itself, some

02:43of them at the top. But, you know, we weathered the storm to get through these mountains.

02:52And you know, I've previously said to somebody else, we only had to weather those storms

02:56individually, day by day. There's mothers, like day six was for Jayden Parkinson, 17

03:08years old, pregnant, murdered by a coercive and cold controlling partner. Her mother has

03:14to weather these storms every day for the rest of her life. So there's no comparison.

03:22Yeah, it wasn't great conditions, but it's nothing in comparison to what that woman has

03:28to go through every day. How much pain you go through, like pushing through pain barriers

03:34when you do these kind of challenges. You look into the eyes of a mother that's buried a child,

03:39that's pain. That's pain. And that's a pain that they live with every day.

03:46A few little niggles here and there, we'll recover from that.

03:50You can't recover from burying a child. Not completing is not an option.

03:54Just not an option. I mean, I've had issues with my knees for a few years now.

03:59And some of those mountains were painful, extremely painful, pain that I've never

04:05experienced on any challenge I've done so far. But at no point did I think I can't do this,

04:12or I will not do this, or it was, no, this, I'm going to complete this. I'm going to do

04:17this for these women and the mothers and the families, the friends.

04:23Very last minute, I changed the mountains on day four, because I found about this mountain

04:28with a white chapel at the top. It was brought to my attention called Cro-Patrick.

04:35And I got to the top, I saw this white chapel and I just burst into tears.

04:40You know, there's a great support out there of everything I do and what I do. And I'm constantly

04:46getting messages of support while I'm doing these things and comments and likes. But there's a side

04:52that people don't see, and that's the emotional impact that it has on myself. I've cried after

04:59training. I've cried in the shower. I've cried at these events. It does, it hits me,

05:06very, very emotionally. When you have a, someone dies,

05:12the, one of the biggest fears is that they're going to be forgotten. Our loved ones are going

05:15to be forgotten about. So for me, it's keeping their memory alive, it's keeping their name alive.

05:21And that's the thing for me, because I know how important it is to families.

05:36Now I need to think about what I'm going to do next.

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