Rachel raises more than £2,000 for heart screenings in memory of best friend Alasdair

A “CHALLENGING and emotional” walk has helped to raise more than £2,000 for heart screenings in Dunfermline.

Rachel Brown, 26, completed the near-100-mile West Highland Way in August in memory of her best friend, Alasdair McFadzean, who died at just 21 in 2018.

Alasdair passed away in his sleep due to Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS), an explanation for the sudden death, usually of young people, after an unexpected cardiac arrest.

Now, Rachel, who lives in Dunfermline, is on a mission to help fund heart screenings in the city to help prevent the condition.

She says Alasdair would have thought she had lost her mind, but that it was him who kept her going throughout the difficult seven-day trek.

“To do it for him makes it that bit special,” she told the Press.

“It is on a lot of people’s bucket lists – it’s one of those challenges – but having done something on my bucket list for this makes it that bit more special and important; to do it in honour of something which changed, shook, and destroyed my life.

“Grief doesn’t go away, it just changes, to take that and do some good with it and have positivity come from it which could change things is so special.”

Though she admits there were times where she wanted to give up – where she was cursing Alasdair’s name – she says she always knew she could complete the hike.

Alongside her mum, Susan Cole, and husband, Paul Brown, who she says she couldn’t have done it without, Rachel walked from Milngavie to Fort William, with her step-dad, Stevie Cole, driving the trio to hotels at the end of each 14-mile day.

“I would be halfway up a hill in tears thinking, ‘I’m going home’,” she laughed.

“But having my husband and my mum there, we pushed one another, dragged each other, along.

“It’s a beautiful part of the world, the first whack is around Loch Lomond, and then into Glen Coe and the hills – it’s just stunning.

“The second-last day was the Devil’s Staircase, I knew that was coming but hadn’t really looked it up. The night before, we were sitting wondering why it is called that – I should not have searched it before.”

And even though she had her own team, Rachel says the sense of community along the walk, with support from both other hikers and locals, is what set the challenge apart from any other.

“There are lots of little cafes – well more like huts or sheds – set at the end of people’s gardens, some had honesty boxes, occasionally you would come across a hot coffee and a cake!” she explained.

“One had a ‘height of the hills’ map, we looked at it, thinking we had come quite far, and realised we hadn’t even done half the height.

“It’s not an easy path – some of it is corroded and you’re climbing over rocks, it is amazing, we couldn’t have done it without my step-dad picking us up.

“There are lots of funny pictures of me lying on the ground – you’re walking and feel like you’re nearly there but you’re not.

“When I originally said I would do it I was thinking of doing it alone but I wouldn’t have finished like that, not without the motivation from my mum and husband.

“But you’re never actually alone, there are hundreds of people on the walk. At the end of the day, we were doing it for Alasdair, he was at the centre of it the whole way.”

The venture raised a total of £2,266, including several donations thanks to sponsorships from local businesses, all of which were named on the group’s t-shirts, to be put towards screening sessions, in Dunfermline and beyond, with more fundraising due to take place.

You can keep up with Rachel’s journey on the Hearts for Alasdair Facebook page.

There is more information about SADS, Alasdair’s story, and the charity who carry out heart screenings, CRY, on the fundraising page here: https://www.c-r-y.org.uk/ mystory-alasdair-mcfadzean/