Adam's Climb for Integrated Education

I’m really excited to be doing the Mourne Wall Challenge to raise money for the Integrated Education Fund, and Integrated AlumNI!

I’ve always loved nature, right back to when I was a student at Lagan College.  We were lucky that the school sits in a beautiful place, in the middle of National Trust-maintained land, with a meadow that leads up to the Castlereagh hills, with one of the best views of Belfast I think there is.  We used to sometimes do cross-country running in the Cregagh Glen in PE class.  The Glen also eventually leads down into Belfast itself, and in those times before Lagan had a high fence around the whole school, was also a way for Lagan’s kids to covertly escape class – not me of course…

The Mourne Wall Challenge is one of the most challenging one-day mountain hikes in Ireland.  It involves following the entire circuit of the Mourne Wall, ascending 15 mountain summits, including seven of the highest, with a total elevation across the day of about a third of Everest!  It’ll be a very early start, and a late finish.

I’ve been involved in the Integrated AlumNI for about 10 years now, advocating for expanded Integration.  A lot of the challenges I’ve been involved in so far – giving evidence to the Assembly’s Education Committee, hatching a strategy to pass the Integrated Education Act, hosting events on how parents can vote to turn their kid’s schools Integrated – they aren’t very physical challenges.  So it’ll be nice to do something a bit more physical for the cause!

I’ve climbed 42 mountains over 3,000ft in Scotland where I live (42 peaks out of a total of 382 – I’ve a while to go!), so I’ve done a fair bit of climbing before. But the Mourne Wall will be the longest hike I’ve done in a single day.

The first of my practice hikes, with two friends tagging along last week, was Buachaille Etive Beag near Glencoe, a pair of 3,000 and 3100ft mountains.  With two friends tagging along, we experienced all three seasons in one day, with hailstones pelting us in the face, blazing sunshine and periods where the clouds parted to reveal views stretching for miles and miles around.  During a break in the hailstones on our ascent, a rainbow stretched across the gap between the two peaks.

We had lunch with a German couple we met who were keen to tell us about their experience of Belfast – how they loved the friendly people but were shocked at the sheer height of the ‘peace walls’ they saw.  I didn’t even bring up Integrated Education, or what I was doing – they told me that unprompted.  Our conflict looms large in the mind of any visitor – and we won’t solve it without Integrated Education.

We were up and down in about 4 hours, beating the guide time of 5-6 hours.

I’ll be hiking about six other mountains in the run-up to the Mourne Wall challenge in July, to make sure I’m ready.  I’m aiming to raise at least £1,000 and I’m a third of the way there.  I just talked my dentist into giving me a donation..!

#AdamsClimbfor IE