Peaks challenge message from Bury addicts' team

For a team calling themselves Peaky Blinders, taking on the Three Peaks Challenge is more than a fund raising effort.

The 11 team members from the Bury St Edmunds area have all fought addiction to either alcohol or drugs and want to show others in the same position that there is a way out.

Clare Lincoln, Shez Bucknole, Andy Bunter, Bruce Wright, Lloyd Williams, Ollie King, Andy May, Justin Battiste, Jamie Humphreys, Jay Gough and Darren Moore will be taking on Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon on September 7 and 8.

They are doing it for the racing industry's benevolent charity Racing Welfare, which helped Darren. They had planned to support the Bury St Edmunds addiction charity Focus 12, which helped some of the others, but it is to close.

Darren, an ex-stud manager, says alcoholism cost him his job, home and family but Racing Welfare helped him get into rehab in December 2017.

He said: "When you're in an addiction you feel there is no way out, nowhere to go, but there is a solution there – the help is out there if you want it."

He admits if someone had said last December that he would be doing the Three Peaks nine months later he would have laughed.

"I'd have said 'not a chance' because I thought God put me on the planet just to drink, " he said. "We want to show people it's possible to get out."

When we spoke he was in Ireland visiting his children, which he says he would not have been able to do if he had not been in rehab.

Peaky Blinders have been training at Bury St Edmunds Leisure Centre and will climb the three highest peaks in Britain under the guidance of specialists Ascend Adventure.

You can sponsor them at www.justgiving.com/fundraising/teampeakyblinders2