Bourne former soldier completes Heroes Hike of Mount Snowdon and passes £30,000 fundraising mark in aid of Help For Heroes

A former soldier had two reasons to celebrate after conquering Mount Snowdon and passing the £30,000 fundraising mark for an armed forces charity.

Adrian Pearson, from Bourne, joined a 21-strong group for the Heroes Hike, 18km up and down the highest mountain in Wales.

Having already completed the charity’s Lincolnshire Wolds walk, two more challenges organised by Help For Heroes now await this year for Adrian who suffers with rheumatoid arthritis.

The weather was kind for the latest trek, but Adrian, who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after eight years in the British Army, found the numbers of walkers at the hiking hotspot uncomfortable.

“I was very nervy and cautious the whole day,” Adrian admitted.

“I thought I had done enough physical training in advance, but I was still preoccupied with the prospect of the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis preventing me from my goal.”

Adrian usually walks between 5km and 9km a day and has to bathe every day to help ease the condition.

“I have started to feel it in my elbows and the backs of my shoulders, on top of the knees, hips, fingers.

“I have to have a bath once or twice a day to relieve the pain.”

Also of comfort was reaching a new landmark in his fundraising for the armed forces charity as he hit his £30,000 target during a day of collections at Tesco in Market Deeping.

Further online donations have taken his tally to £30,092.51.

But he is not stopping there. Adrian will soon get preparing for the next Heroes Hike in the Yorkshire Dales, in August, followed soon after by Dartmoor in September.

His next fundraising outing will be in his home town at the Picnic In The Park, in the Wellhead Park in Bourne, on Saturday, June 16.