TWO walkers from Swindon have climbed three peaks in the Alps to help raise £50k for Wiltshire’s only children’s hospice Julia’s House.

Dawn Maggs and Ashleigh Hunter, both from Swindon, climbed thee peaks in Switzerland, Italy and France over three days in July to complete a section of the Tour De Mont Blanc Route.

Walking with a team of 27 other fundraisers from Julia’s House the pair walked over 30 miles across the Alps, walking at an average altitude of 1,500 meters and climbing to 2,537m to cross the Grand Col Ferret pass.

Dawn told the Adver: "The scenery was absolutely fantastic, and it was such a humbling experience meeting all these people. You start talking and everyone has a story.

"They’ve got kids that are dying, there was one little boy Michael and his 14-year-old sister is in Julia’s House. He was 11, he walked for three days without moaning once.

"It was a real eye-opener. I would do it again tomorrow."

Despite training in the run up to the trek the changeable conditions and strenuous climbing pushed the pair to the max.

“Within an hour I had got a blister and it was baking hot," said Dawn.

"We were absolutely soaking wet walking in 30-degree heat, but it was because we were walking uphill for thee and a half hours.

“Ashleigh lost both her toe nails on her big toes because her boots were pushing down on her toe. They were black, they were awful.

"But my blisters, which took two weeks to heal, were nothing compared to her toenails falling off. But it was the most amazing time ever.

“It changes very quickly the weather up there. At the end of second day it was thunder and lightning, coming down in sheets, that disappeared, and the sun came out and we had 30-degree heat.”

Dawn came across the charity, which provides palliative care to terminally ill children, after hearing about it while on a trip to Poole where the first house opened.

The second opened in Devizes in May 2017, the first children's hospice in Wiltshire.

The nearest hospice for children in Swindon was Helen and Douglas House in Oxford Naomi House in Bristol.

Dawn added: “Up until last May we didn’t have a children’s hospice at all in Wiltshire, there was nothing for children that were terminally ill. So if your kid was dying, you had to take them out of the county.”