OU Chancellor’s Three Peaks Challenge

Posted on 14 May 2024 • University news

The Open University Chancellor, Baroness Martha Lane Fox, is taking on a momentous physically enduring test: tackling Britain’s Three Peaks Challenge in aid of four charities.

And it’s an epic adventure for the 51-year old since she has endured 47 operations after breaking 28 bones in her body twenty years ago in a car crash in Morocco that nearly killed her.

The mother of seven-year-old identical twin sons says she needs constant physiotherapy, trains every single day and moves all the time: “That’s just what you have to do if you want to be able to do some of the things that are around you.”

Scafell Pike success

Recently, she climbed England’s highest peak, Scafell Pike in the Lake District, with family and friends.

The peak stands 912m. She’s already climbed Snowdon (1,039m) and by the time she climbs Ben Nevis in Scotland (1,344m) in September she hopes to have raised £300,000 to be split between the charities:

• One Day Trauma, which helps people rebuild their lives after a catastrophic injury
• Horatio’s Garden, eight gardens throughout the UK specifically set up to nurture the wellbeing of people after suffering spinal injuries
• Ability Net, which promotes a digital world being accessible to all, and
• I Am the Code, which aims to enable a million young women and girls to become coders by 2030

The former owner of lastminute.com and now the president of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) who regularly presides at The Open University student graduation ceremonies, explained her motivation: “It’s 20 years since my accident and, well, I don’t really love looking backwards, and I often live in a state of denial about what happened to me.

“It is also my life and that is what happened to me, so I wanted to channel this kind of strange anniversary into something positive.”

She says she had set her sights on Mount Everest, but got talked out of it especially since her “hip collapsed” and she “nearly lost her leg” a couple of years ago.

UK “so beautiful”

She refocused her target after realising her work as OU Chancellor and president of the BCC meant she felt incredibly invested in the UK and thought: “It’s given me so many opportunities and it’s so beautiful, so I thought what better way of looking at and exploring it than going high up and trying to conquer the places you can see from the highest points.”

She said she hoped she was fit enough: “It’s much more tricky for me. I have to use a kind of micro concentration of worrying about climbing because I can’t feel my feet so well. I have to really think about where they are so it’s actually more of a mind thing than it is a physical one in a weird way.”

When she descended Snowdon she said she and the 35 friends who were with her celebrated with champagne. For the final peak in Scotland there will be 60 of them to crack open the bubbly with her.