A LAKE District man who launched a "Going the Distance" campaign has raised thousands of pounds for a charity close to his heart after completing a series of testing challenges.

Former Sedbergh School pupil Jack Roberts, of Grasmere, has collected in excess of £15,000 for Parkinson's UK - the charity's single biggest individual fund raising effort in the north.

Jack left Sedbergh in 2013 and this summer completed a three year degree course at Loughborough University. Whilst working out his next career move Jack set himself a series of challenges to raise funds and awareness for Parkinson's UK and to contribute his upmost to the charity’s desire to ensure new and better treatments become available.

His challenges this year have included the Three Peaks Challenge in April which involves summiting the UK's three highest peaks - Ben Nevis, Scafell and Snowdon - in under 24 hours. In June and July he successfully completed The Wainwright Challenge which saw him walking 700 kilometres in 25 days while summiting 214 Lake District peaks – the equivalent of ascending and descending Mount Everest five times!

And in August he set off on the Rickshaw Run, travelling 3,000km along the west coast of India in a 7HP Tuk Tuk.

"My chosen charity was an easy one," said Jack, whose father was diagnosed with the progressive neurological condition. "Having lived alongside Parkinson’s Disease for the last 18 years of my life, witnessing the effects on both an individual and a family, I thought even my small actions could make a difference.’

The fundraising was topped off when electric string quartet, Escala, who rose to fame when they entered Britain's Got Talent where they reached the final in May 2008, put on a concert in the Powell Hall at Sedbergh School and helped raise a further £4,000. They were supported by a selection of Sedbergh School’s most talented former pupils and the concert was supported by insurance brokers Lycetts.

Charles Renwick, of Lycetts, said: "We were delighted to organise and sponsor this concert. It is hugely rewarding on a number of levels: to support an inspirational individual and help to raise money for such a worthy cause, to support an event of this scale in Cumbria where we have such deep connections, and to help make this unique evening of sensational music possible."

After BGT Escala signed a £1.5million contract with Simon Cowell and went on to release an album in 2009. They are made up of Victoria Lyon and Honor Watson (violins), Stephanie Benedetti (viola) and Helen Nash “cello”.