Congratulations to Jill Cox and Emma Holcombe, who, having completed the Three Peaks challenge two years ago with friends and colleagues at Mulberry, based in Chilcompton, have climbed their highest mountain yet, scaling the tallest mountain in Africa – Kilimanjaro. Once all of the money has been collected, the pair’s original target was around £8,000 which will be split in half between the Cardiology Department at the RUH in memory of Jill’s father, and Mulberry’s charity of the year, Time is Precious, but they have raised a whopping £12,000, meaning at least £6,000 to each charity.

Jill and Emma have been working hard to raise the money as well as training and completing their challenge – before they left, they were organising raffle draws, cake sales, fun runs, a band night and even sitting in bathtubs full of beans to collect some cash!

Speaking about their once-in-a-lifetime experience, Jill said: “All of our training really paid off. Leading up to the summit night, Emma and I handled all the walking really well.

“The summit night, however was the hardest time, after walking all day, then a few hours’ sleep to start walking again at 12.30 a.m. and reach the summit for 7.30 a.m., it was a tough couple of days. We then had to walk down the mountain to the next camp.

“The summit night reached freezing point – my layers kept me warm though and the new ski gloves helped keep my hands snug! It was an awesome experience, the views were out of this world, above and below the clouds – it was truly amazing.

“A few people in the group did suffer with altitude sickness and had to be escorted quickly down to lower altitude levels to recover.

“We had a really good group of people and Action Challenge, with the supporting team on the mountain, really looked after all of us and made it a very special experience.”

The pair’s fundraising page will stay open until the end of the month: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/MulberryKilimanjaro