Cornish mother completes Three Peaks Challenge to help young women with their mental health

Celebrations as the Georgia's Voice team completed their Three Peaks Challenge. Credit: Georgia's Voice

A grieving mother and her teammates have completed their exhausting Three Peaks Challenge to fund a mental health support hub for young women in Cornwall.

Sophie Alway set up Georgia's Voice in memory of her 19-year-old daughter, Georgia Lee Gallaway, who died by suicide in 2020.

The charity has been a support network for young women struggling with their mental health and looking for help from people who have lived experience.

Sophie says there were times during the challenge when she really felt like her daughter was with her.

She said: "I was like 'Georgia you've got to help me through this', please. I just kept talking to her... and once we got to the top [of Scarfell Pike] all of the clouds parted, the sun came out.

"I was like telling them how I'd asked Georgia for help and our mountain leader Dan was going 'this never happens, you never get to see this view, you don't get to see the bottom.'"

The challenge was made even more difficult when they were unable to leave the Lake District car park because of a broken down lorry and looked unlikely to make their third and final peak - Snowden.

Thankfully their mountain leader Dan came up with an alternative plan.

Sophie said: "Luckily he already had all the mountain routes downloaded on his phone so he found us another mountain which was behind Scarfell which was steeper and bigger than Snowden."

"We had to dig deep, we'd only just done Scarfell and we were supposed to have a five-hour-break for the drive and we just went straight and did the other mountain instead."

"So we got our three peaks, it wasn't the three we expected to do but we did it."

Powered on with written messages from the girls who they support, the team finished their the challenge on the evening of Wednesday 19 June night.

Sophie and the charity trustees are now nearly half way to their £50,000 goal which they need to open the new cafe hub in Pool next month.

The Georgia's Voice hub will offer one-to-one counselling during the day, host evening and weekend drop-in sessions and workshops for any young women needing support.

The charity says once they're up and running they will use the income from their onsite cafe to fund the mental health work they do.