Intrepid Shoosmiths team complete the O2 climbing challenge for Solent Mind

A team from the Solent office (Bridgette Nolan, Abby Legge, Sophia Hampton, Lauren Pontin and Cris Metcalfe) took on the O2 climbing challenge on Friday 8th March 2019. Cris Metcalfe explained how the challenge was completed.

"The day started as a beautiful sunny day but by midday (the time of our climb) the clouds came over and the wind started to pick up. Luckily we didn’t have any rain during the climb – apparently if we had, we would have need to do the steeper downwards section backwards!

The O2 has 12 columns (months), rises 52 metres high (weeks in a year) and is 365 metres (days in a year) in diameter. The climb took us 90 minutes in total, starting with a briefing from Tom who also helped up get the suits and safety harness ready. Some of us are a little bit terrified of heights (hence the challenge) but we were very excited to get started. The first part of the climb is at a 30 degree angle and this was a bit of an effort, but the views at the top made it worth it! After spending 15 minutes admiring the view and getting our breath back, we started the descent, which was relatively easy to start with, but, as we already anticipated, what goes up must come down and as there was a 30 degree incline up, so there was another 30 degree incline going down! We all made it safely and were happy to have achieved it.

The main purpose of the day was, of course, raising money for Solent Mind, which is our local charity. Along with “dress down Wednesdays” in March and fundraising from colleagues and friends, we raised over £700, which was a great result.

Thank you to all our Shoosmiths colleagues for your support!"