Ossie Bear raises money for Nepal with Snowdonia adventure

We have lived at 2100m above sea level for a few years now, so we know how challenging the month of May can be to keep busy up here. Everybody works so hard in the winter and when May comes everything shuts down.

There is no work, no skiing and all the shops, restaurants and sports facilities are closed. It seems that everybody goes away for a well deserved end of season break and it is mainly just the people with children in the local school who are tied to stay here.

The school here is great, Ossie does well in class, his handwriting is perfect and neater than most adults and he is completely bi-lingual. The teachers are cool and do lots of real sports with the children and most summers they even take them on amazing week long trips to sail in the south of France or visit a big city like London or Paris.

Childhood can be a wonderful time but it is just so short.  I am very thankful that Ossie has a great school to go to but sometimes I would much rather my son be having as much fun as possible and learning things hands on by travelling, exploring, planning adventures and doing as many different sports as possible while he is young.

Children spend a lot of their childhood in school and the law is that they must go to school. But quite often this prevents us from living freely and enjoying life.

In an effort to stop society dictating how we should live and bring up my son, I promised myself to step outside the box more and do what I feel is best for me and my little family. So I came up with a plan to make the month of May more exciting in a way that would benefit the two of us, rather than the normal routine.

The school calendar for May consisted of lots of days off and if I was to take Ossie out of school for the whole month he would actually only miss 10 days of school in total. I got offered some work in the UK coaching the local ski race teams for a few weeks and I arranged to stay with my parents in England.

Now the real challenge was how can I make this time more worthwhile to Ossie than being in school. I sat with Ossie and talked to him about my ideas, he was over the moon that he could possibly have time out of school, like any nine year old boy would be. I explained to him that there would have to be guidelines and deals made to make this work and he would have to make me a promise that he would stick to it. So we came up with the following deals.

• I will keep up with my school work (1/2 hour every day)
• I will catch up with any school work I have missed when I return
• I will do sport every day
• I will do things I have never done before
• I will explore new places
• I will do something good to help other people
• I will have an amazing time!

Ossie was keen to sign up to these deals and asked his teacher the next day if he could leave school for the month. The official school inspector said ‘no’, his class teacher said ‘have a great time, see you in June’.

So basically they could not give us permission but they couldn’t stop us, so off we went. An 18 hour drive later we were at my parents in Buckingham, England who we have only seen for 1 week over Christmas in the last year!

It was great to be back and we spent the first week seeing friends and family, enjoying the beautiful English countryside and doing lots of sports.

Here Is Ossie keeping up with his school work, just 1/2 hour a day was enough. I tried to seize the moments when he actually wanted to read, write or do maths – so that he was more engaged and more likely to learn.

My awesome Dad, John Collins is an electrician and rides fast motor bikes, he told me that he had always wanted to climb the three highest mountains in Britain but not all in the same week or day like a lot of people do. So I came up with the idea that the three of us take a trip to Snowdonia national park (somewhere Ossie has never been before) and climb the highest mountain there, Snowdon!

That way Ossie could plan a trip, explore somewhere new and he could get sponsored to climb a mountain to help others. Ossie loved the idea and we got started planning the trip I gave him a list of questions to answer and he used the computer to find the answers.

Ossie enjoyed planning the trip and while talking to my mum about the plans, she said ‘isn’t the worlds fastest zipper line in Snowdonia?” We loved the sound of that, so that was instantly added to the agenda!

We went online to book the tickets, but were disappointed to see that the restrictions were…

• Height 140cm
• Weight 30kg
• Age 10 years old

We put 9 year old Ossie on the scales and measured him and couldn’t believe that he was exactly 140cm tall and weighed exactly 30kg, the only problem was that he wasn’t 10 for another 8 months!

We fixed this issue by asking him how old he was every 5 minutes and getting him to answer, “I am 10 years old”, so he wouldn’t forget when they ask him on the day.

Ossie has had an interest in Mount Everest for a few years now since he heard it was the highest mountain in the world. He knows lots of facts about Everest.

So after the Nepalese earthquake, I suggested that he raised money for the Himalayan trust. This would also be a good opportunity to teach him about earthquakes, how and why they happen, their devastating effects and how the money he raises will help people get better and rebuild their homes.

We set up a just giving page and posted it to Facebook, the donations poured in from people who also wanted to help Nepal!

We stayed at the bottom of Snowdon at The Royal Victoria Hotel and got up early the next day and drove to Pen Y Pass to park the van. It was pouring with rain and foggy from our first steps.

The climb up was not easy, but we had a lot of fun and chatted, it seemed like Ossie ran up most of the way loving it.

Because of the bad weather and visibility we lost our way a couple of times, but got back on track with the map.

We didn’t really stop and a few hours later we made it to the summit of Snowdon, cold, wet and tired.

I raced the last bit with Ossie to the summit, he beat me and he was so happy to make it to the top and jumped up and down saying ‘i’m on the top of Mount Snowdon!’

The most memorable moments in life are not when we are warm, wearing our pyjamas on the sofa watching a disney movie, but when we are cold, wet and tired, these are the moments we will always remember.

The climb was 12k in total and around 1k up and took us most of the day. When we got back to the van we got changed and Ossie fell asleep pretty quickly.