14 of us here at Peak Retreats signed up to the Great South Run, a 10-mile challenge, in memory of our colleague Valerie Fouger, who passed away in 2013 at the age of just 31 of a brain tumour. So on Sunday 21 October, we donned our ski goggles, which were donated by those kind folks over at PANDA Optics, and headed to the start line...

Our team - Alison, Claire, Charlotte, Sarah, Marie-Anne, Lyndsey, Tim, Marie-Laure, Marie-Sophie, Molly, Chris and Steve - who are part of our reservations, marketing and product departments were joined by Emilie and company founder Nathalie who are both based in France and travelled over especially for the event.

We all had the best time! The sun was shining and the crowds loved seeing us run in our PANDA Optics ski goggles and, after seeing is on the Channel 5 coverage that morning, cheered us on with gusto as we ran past. 

Here are some photos from the day...

Everyone completed the challenge and for many of us it was the first time we had participated in anything like this.  The weather was wonderful - bright, fresh, still and cloudless and lots of personal targets were beaten! 

Getting through the finish line was very emotional for all sorts of reasons and the strength of feeling is perfectly summed up in the official Great South Run photo below...

We aimed to raise a £1,000 for Brain Tumour Research but totally smashed that target - we're almost at £1,500! A huge thank you to everyone who supported us on the day, to PANDA Optics for our goggles and to all those who donated including Easy Networks & Darwin Digital.

We are leaving our fundraising page open for a little longer, so please do donate if you can. You can also find out more about why we did this for Valerie.