EMPLOYEES at a department store will be glad to have their feet back on the ground floor after climbing the UK’s three highest mountains for charity.

Nine ‘partners’ at WGC’s John Lewis store completed the Three Peaks Challenge last month to raise money for Beating Bowel Cancer, and have been trying to recover ever since.

The challenge involved first scaling Ben Nevis in Scotland, then on to Scafell Pike in England and lastly Snowdon in Wales, in just 24 hours.

The team, which included six department managers from the Bridge Road branch, completed it in a respectable 30 hours and have so far raised more than �4,500 for the store’s charity of the year.

Rewarding

Andy Poupart, event organiser and department manager for electricals at John Lewis, said: “It was so rewarding to see people’s fitness improving over the six months of training and to then complete it, even though at the start some were doubting themselves.

“It was a really great experience and we managed to raise a lot of money.

“We’ve all learned so much and there was a real sense of team spirit.”

Eight of the nine climbers had no previous experience of mountaineering before and, after a helicopter had to be flown in at Ben Nevis to rescue another climber who’d had a heart attack, everyone was thankful they completed it without too much drama.

Andy added: “The main thing is that we got back safely – I’m really proud of the team.”

As well as Andy, the eight other partners who took part in the challenge were Kate Adam, Mark Boringdon, Jayne Bricker, Mary O’Donovan, Jenny Parry, Sue Vine, Louise Wenn and the store’s managing director Andrew Slater.