There will be mountains to climb

The aim this year? It really is to go higher than I've gone before - and, at the same time, feel like I am on top of the world. I couldn't be more excited to share the personal challenge I have set myself for 2019.

This spring, I’ll join the first Brick School to Base Camp Trek – from the brick fields of Kathmandu, we'll trek into the Himalayan hills that provide Nepal's capital with migrant child labourers and then on to the launch pad for climbing expeditions of Mount Everest. It’s going to be like nothing I’ve ever done before – and I’ve got two main reasons for doing it.

Firstly, the Brick Children School Charity is a fantastic cause to support - their fundraising events in Cardiff in recent years have been fun and I've enjoyed learning more about their work: ensuring the youngsters not only get an education but are looked after while working away from home. When they attend lessons, the kids get a meal and fresh water, access to clean toilets and regular medical checks - as well as a school uniform.

Practical classes for adults are provided too - sewing training for women, as well as literacy, has encouraged many of them to go on to form small businesses, helping them lift their families out of poverty.

Before the school was established, the children's education came to a halt for six months as they made up to 1,000 bricks a day alongside their parents. When they returned to the hill villages, like those we will visit along our trek, the youngsters often dropped out of school because they had fallen behind their peers.

But there's another reason I am doing this. Setting a few personal goals at the start of the year is something I’ve come to really value, transferring the same discipline and focus that comes from creating objectives in work to the stuff I want to do away from the office.

So, for three years now, I’ve used the turn of the year to jot down a few priorities for the months ahead. My to do list includes simple things like getting dates in the diary to see those mates who live away that you’ve been promising you’ll catch up with for too long, carving out time to read more books/ see more movies, etc. If and when the work plan gets blown off course by events beyond your control, there’s always the personal stuff that you can – usually - do something about.

I call it my “feed my soul” resolution – and it’s worked for me. Others would see it as a way to well-being. The Brick School to Base Camp trek will literally take it to another level. Not least because this one is a shared commitment - I signed up to the two-week trek at altitude at the same time as my other half.

We're embracing this challenge together. Training started in earnest in the autumn with our first ascent of Snowdon - when we met some of the group we'll be part of: a great mix of people that will be good company on the journey. And we marked the New Year by climbing Pen y Fan. It means we're sticking to last year's fitness goals and have quality time together in amongst all the other stuff we've individually got going on.

If you'd like to encourage Rodney and I then we've set up a fundraising page here. Your contribution will be gratefully received and, aside from the usual Just Giving fee, all of it will be going to help Brick Children School add to the 1,000 children it has reached since 2001.