Jenny's highland trek for India

TEACHER Jenny Selley is this week embarking on a wild walk - a 177-mile trek across some of Britain's wilderness landscape.

Mrs Selley and husband Gordon will be crossing the Scottish Highlands on The Great Outdoors Challenge, and also raising money to support a charity project at her school.

The walk will take the couple from Shiel Bridge in the west over to Montrose in the east, crossing the Grampians and Cairngorms.

Most of the two-week trek should be on mountain and valley paths but they will have maps and compass in hand for when the paths run out, and carry their own tent and food as they will be wild camping much of the time.

“Some nights we hope to stay in bothies (stone-built shelters once used by rural workers) but it may actually be warmer to stay in our tent than a bothy,” said Mrs Selley, a science teacher at Deben High in Felixstowe.

“We are aiming to do around 17 miles a day but much will depend on the weather - the showers can be very heavy and the winds very strong. One friend described the weather in the Highlands as atmospheric going on aquatic!

“We are really looking forward to the challenge - it's not a race, it is a personal challenge to complete it.”

There will be 350 people doing the walk but with everyone working out their own routes the couple may not meet any of the others.

Mr and Mrs Selley are being sponsored on their walk with money raised going to the Connecting Youth Around the Globe (CYAG) charity, which is being supported by Deben students.

Pupils are among those at five schools in the UK and USA raising �2,000 each so a school and community centre can be built in one of the poorest parts of India - for a community of “untouchables” or “Dalits”, one quarter of the population but who are traditionally shunned, insulted and excluded from society.

Are you doing an interesting fundraising project for charity? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN, or e-mail eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk