Well Done Sophie!

Three countries, over 3000km, on foot and on her own!

Sophie Rooney, an LD Mountain Centre sponsored athlete, has just completed this marathon trek from Nordkapp at the very northern tip of Norway to the Danish / German border at Flensburg raising money fro the following charities;

The Thomas Theyer Foundation – www.thomastheyerfoundation.org.uk

Mountain Rescue England and Wales – www.mountainrescue.org.uk

The Stroke Association – www.stroke.org.uk

The Sofie’s adventure started in Nordkapp in the very north of Norway. Within a few weeks though, Sophie became unwell and she found herself in hospital in Abisko in Arctic Sweden diagnosed with a bleeding ulcer and needing an emergency blood-transfusion.

Undeterred, after a couple of days, and a warning from the doctor to take it easy, she set off again. The daily distance was reduced for a while – from the planned 40km a day to 25km. The knock-on effect of the illness and shorter distances run each day, meant the whole trip would take longer than planned. And would be a lot colder, as she ran into the winter. It also meant an increasing lack of camping facilities as they began to close for the season.

Despite all this, Sophie spent the vast majority of nights in her increasingly chilly Nordisk Telemark tent, with a few respite nights in camping huts or hotels when she was able to negotiate a big enough discount. Some of the best nights however were those spent courtesy of the many new friends Sophie had made along the way, and who invited her into their homes in Norway and gave her a real taste for the country.

This has been a fantastic achievement for Sophie and she is on course to raise well over £2000 for her charities via funding through PledgeSports – www.pledgesports.org and she hopes to continue raising money by giving inspirational talks to schools and clubs.

So well done Sophie we’ll be waiting to hear what your next adventure might be.