Having never written a blog before I was pleasantly amazed at the amount of people who appear to have read it. I stumbled on the 'stats' button a couple of days after I published it and saw that it had been read 38 times, and not just in this country!! I must admit I then developed a bit of an annoying habit of checking it every half an hour to see how many more of you had read it!! I have managed to control myself now and just check daily but I am still amazed that nearly 30 Americans have read my blog and others throughout Europe too, well over 100 so far....powerful stuff this blogging!!

This week has been a non-stop whirlwind of events which started on Monday, as most weeks do! The fact that it started on Monday was going to be about all that actually was normal. While I was with my good friend Paul the phone rang and it was Bob from Talking2Minds. He asked after my health and after exchanging pleasantries very casually asked if I would like to be a trustee for the charity. Well, Paul will tell you my chin hit the floor and after I'd burbled a bit I asked what it would involve. The first thing, Bob said, would be to attend the next trustee's meeting. In 4 hours time in the Forest of Dean!! Paul and I finished our coffees and I went back to the car and it must be said I was in a state of shock at the same time as feeling very honoured to have been asked to take on such an important role for Talking2Minds. The evening was the new beginning of what is already an amazing journey.

Tuesday was equally interesting. I had a meeting with the amazing and lovely Lucinda Flump who I met last year on a sponsored parachute jump for the Pilgrim Bandits. Pilgrims are a brilliant charity who raise money for forces amputees and they run various challenges throughout the year. The monies raised from their fundraising is channelled back into taking injured members on adventure and confidence building expeditions so that once their confidence is regained they can go on and achieve far more than they may have achieved before being injured. To find out more, and to be inspired by the guys they help go to www.pilgrimbandits.org   Lucinda has just completed one of those challenges which was climbing Kilimanjaro (you can read more about their particular journey on the Pilgrims website above). She wrote on my Facebook page encouraging support "I've just come back from Kilimanjaro and it was hell on earth, altitude sickness is the devil and 3 people died on the mountain the day our group reached the summit. This is no ordinary sponsored walk, it's tough physically and mentally and I'm still recovering even now." These words have sort of stuck with me and given me a steely determination to raise even more money for the simple reason it doesn't look like something I'll be doing twice!! Lucinda was fantastic. It was a two hour chat that had everything really, we talked about the kit list (and I got some great tips of dos and donts!) and spoke about the bravery of not only Lucinda herself but the 4 amputees who were also on the trek. We laughed and also spoke of the more serious aspects of the challenge..... I left our meeting feeling a real sense of "what have I let myself in for" but it's far too late for that so now it really is all about focussing on the job in hand and raising a lot of money and awareness for Talking2Minds. Thanks Lucinda!!

Yesterday I was back in the Forest of Dean doing my first radio interview for the charity on BBC Radio Gloucester which will be aired on Monday morning. I was in a lovely relaxed setting with great people around me but still managed to be nervous so I hope I got the message across and did the charity justice!! This was followed by a newspaper interview which was far easier as there wasn't a great big blue microphone in my face!!

On to the important bit - the fundraising!! Talking2Minds is really where my heart is and I see the future for the charity being very bright. The work we do is awe-inspiring and it is just infortunate that we are not even scratching the surface at the moment. Yes, PTSD is getting more coverage in the press at the moment, and yes, people are beginning to realise the severity and size of the problem, but this is just the beginning. We at Talking2Minds are here for the duration to make a massive difference to people's lives. The guys and girls who attend our 'change programmes' go home with renewed purpose and without the nightmares, flashbacks and/or whatever else it was they brought with them when they came to us.

I am only climbing a hill - these people have put their lives on the line for us time and time again without giving it a second thought and now it's our turn to do something for them. If you, as an individual sitting there reading this can just stop and think for 1 minute what it might be like to carry the burden of PTSD around with you for years or even decades....and think you could help in a small way by making a small (or large) donation you too will be making a huge difference. If you are working for or even own a company which may be interested in sponsoring me I can take your company logo to the top of Kilimanjaro and offer plenty of media coverage too. Whatever your situation and wherever you are I will really appreciate every little bit of help I can get with this as I intend to make a huge difference......

Thanks for reading....wherever you are!!

Please donate at www.virginmoneygiving.com/BruceMartin66

and find out more about Talking2Minds at www.talking2minds.co.uk

Please feel free to contact me personally on 07824 832928 (but watch your time zone!!!!)

I met a friend of mine in a coffee shop some weeks ago and told him that I was planning a trek up Kilimanjaro in October. Being a playwright and an actor his creative talent and flair is what puts the bread and butter on his table so I listened and took note when he told me I should really start writing a daily blog. That way, he said, it would be so much easier to remember it all when, having completed the challenge in mid-October, I decided I wanted to write all about it. I told him what a great idea that was as of course I'd love to have a record of such a once-in-a-lifetime expedition. I met him again last week (4 weeks on) and of course his first words were "how's the blog going?" These are the first words of the blog so I'd better try to put the whole thing into perspective from the start....albeit 4 weeks and more further on!!

In fact the whole idea started over a year ago when I agreed to do a trek for charity. When my boss heard about this he asked me if I could do one for the company's own charity as it is one of his personal dreams to climb the Big Hill. There was no way I would commit to 2 treks in a year for family reasons, and the fact that at 46 I'm not getting any younger and having not done a walk longer than a few hours around the shops as rarely as possible it would require enough training to do it once!! So far I have managed to persuade about 20 people to join me, pay deposits etc and all was going well until we hit a snag. The company's charity is based in Austria and so raising money through the normal channels was going to be difficult. The enthusiasm sadly waned from HQ and that gave me an easy decision to make...I could now do the trek for the charity of my own choice which, as I work for them already, was an easy enough choice to make.

That's the background and much of it is irrelevant and won't need to be revisited. Suffice to say Talking2Minds will benefit (massively I hope) from the funds that I intend to raise over the next 6 months or so. Training got underway with a day in January on The Pyg Track on Snowdon and another on March in the beautiful Grasmere. Both were amazing days out and I soon understood why people do this kind of thing for fun! Having said that I recognise completely that Kilimanjaro will be something altogether different. A friend of mine who has recently returned described the experience as "Hell on Earth" and has vowed "never to climb anything - ever again"!!

The reason that I'm now more excited than ever about doing this is twofold. The first is the very fact that I will be raising funds for and awareness of Talking2Minds. We are a military charity helping those who suffer from the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We are funded by ourselves and donations from the public and we need to spread the word far and wide as PTSD is now becoming more recognised and features in the news almost daily yet, even with the amazing results we continue to get, we are largely unknown at the moment. This, I am confident, will change with Neville Thurlbeck as our PR director and Bob Paxman, ex-22 SAS and founder of the charity as our CEO and driving force. We also have various other fundraising efforts going on which I will promote using this blog as I go along!!

The second reason I'm so excited about this particular challenge is that I will be joined by my all-time best mate of about 39 years Paul Witherick. He has been a constant rock to me over the years and the saying that "you know who your true friends are" is absolutely accurate here!! To be at the top of the Big Hill with Paul will be an amazing way to celebrate our friendship.

www.talking2minds.co.uk

You can donate at www.virginmoneygiving.com/BruceMartin66

Thank you.

Bruce.