Friends ready to take on big peak challenge for charity
A Black Country fundraiser has spoken about the mountainous challenge he and four friends are set to face in memory of his late father.
Bal Singh Nahal from Walsall and his friends Luke Studley, Ben Perkins, Kulbir Parmar and Jamie Patel will be taking on three peaks in Yorkshire around the River Ribble, a 24.5 mile, 12-hour challenge which starts and ends at Horton-in-Ribblesdale and involves three peaks more than 650 metres high.
The group will be taking on the gruelling challenge on Saturday, October 21 to raise funds for Parkinson's UK, a charity working to help find a cure for the de-generative disease and something Mr Nahal said he had first-hand knowledge of after seeing his father Avtar suffer from it for seven years.
He said: "The idea of this was to do something for Parkinson's UK in memory of my dad as he had the diagnosis in 2013 and suffered from this for a good seven to seven-and-a-half years, but it may have been longer as his body was slowing down in the year before.
"Originally, I wanted to do the walk when he was alive in 2020, but we were in lockdown and before we came out of it, he died in June that year, then I lost my mum Manjit 10 months later, so I needed time to process that, have bereavement counselling and really get my head right.
"Once I got my head sorted, I thought this was the right time to do it and then we started planning as a group."
Mr Nahal said he and the rest of the group, who are aged between 25 and 55, had been putting in the work to get ready for the challenge, including eight to 10-mile walks from Walsall to places like Sutton Park and Sandwell Valley Country Park, gradually increasing the number of miles.
Before the walk takes place, the group will be hosting a fundraising event at the King Arthur Bar on Liskeard Road in Walsall on Saturday, October 14 with a number of guests from across the borough attending.
Mr Nahal said: "We've got the Just Giving page and this is just another way of topping up towards our £3,000 target, so there will be a quiz night in one room and a pool tournament happening in the other room.
"We've also got local businesses who have donated raffle prizes or pledged prizes for the raffle and received a lot of support from the Mayor of Walsall Chris Towe and Aaron Coleman from Parkinson's UK."
With less than three weeks to go until the walk, Mr Nahal said the experience of planning and training had brought him and his friends closer together.
He said: "It's given us that real bond and, together, we will get through this challenge and keep marching on to get it all done inside 12 hours.
"It's also vital for the charity as it's a disease with no cure and we don't even know the cause, so we want to help Parkinson's UK to continue their work and find a cure and raise awareness of this and help stop people suffering in silence."
To find out more about the challenge and to make a donation, go to justgiving.com/page/5peakyhikers.
