Lawyers climb Arthur's Seat 72 times for charity

Members of the Slater and Gordon team at the summit

Colleagues at Slater and Gordon’s Edinburgh office scaled the landmark 72 times between the team of 12, covering a distance equivalent to 360km to raise vital funds for Finding Your Feet.

The charity runs sports and social clubs across Scotland for people facing amputation or limb difference.

And the team smashed their initial fundraising target of £1,000, raising triple that amount over the course of the ten hour trek.

Sarah McWhirter, who volunteers for Finding Your Feet and is head  of clinical negligence at the firm, said: “There are lots of different routes to the top of Arthur’s Seat  but we chose quite a difficult one as we really wanted to challenge ourselves and we managed to do it 72 times, which is four times the distance of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.”

She added: “The great thing was that everyone exceeded their own personal challenge, completing the route more times that they initially thought they could.”

The challenge was also undertaken in support of the charity’s founder, quadruple amputee Corinne Hutton, who had her hands and legs below the knee amputated after illness and is set to take on the Kilimanjaro climb next month.

Sarah continued: “Corinne also joined us for a couple of hours and she really inspired us to keep going.”

“She had never climbed Arthur’s Seat before so it was a bit of a goal for her too.”

Finding Your Feet launched its first sports club in Edinburgh last month, meeting on a monthly basis at Edinburgh International Climbing Arena. The club has been funded for its first year by an earlier £2,000 donation from Slater and Gordon, who also gave staff the day off work to complete their charity challenge.

Sarah, who helps out at the climbing club along with paralegal Laura Middlemass, said: “Our initial target was £1,000 and we raised just over £3,000 so we are over the moon.”

Corinne, who survived sepsis in 2013 but had to have all her limbs amputated following the battle, was given less than a five per cent chance of survival after a suspected fever was diagnosed as acute pneumonia, flooded lungs and Streptococcal virus A. However, she has since pushed herself to become an avid climber and an integral member of the club.

Speaking about the challenge, Corrine added: “The team were really pumped up to beat their goal and I’m so pleased that it raised so much money, which I promise will change lives.”

She continued: “Positive experiences and lots of laughs make the trauma of amputation bearable and we really want to reach out to more amputees in the East.”

[email protected]