A 76-year-old yoga teacher from Rustington is preparing for the challenge of a lifetime in October when she will be trekking in the Himalayas in India.

Carole Pickworth will join a team of 49 trekkers taking on the 67km trek to raise funds for St Barnabas House hospice in Worthing. She is the oldest trekker taking part.

The challenge will commence when participants depart the UK for Delhi on Thursday 18 October, while the trek itself starts three days later. Carole will be joining her close friend and fellow yoga teacher, Gail Chandler, on the trek.

Carole said: “I’m always up for a challenge. In 1979 I started my own business drafting (building services). I had that for 20 years.

“When one door shut and another door opened. I used to go to a regular yoga class. The teacher said to me one day, ‘Why don’t you train to be a teacher?’ so I trained. I struggled with it, it’s not an easy course. That’s how I met Gail.

“We’ve been to India a couple of times and we’re both yoga teachers, and we’re into the whole ethos of India. It’s not a part of India we’ve been to.”

Carole is taking on the challenge in memory of her mother, Margaret Pickworth, who was cared for by the hospice at the end of her life.

Originally from Surrey, Carole moved down to live in Littlehampton before she moved in with her mother in Rustington when her father, David Pickworth, died in 1986.

Carole said: “In about 2000 she started having a series of small strokes which went on over about ten years. She was a very stoic, determined, feisty personality; a real character and that’s what kept her going.

“She did 50 years voluntary work in the hospitals, Red Cross, WRVS (now the Royal Voluntary Service) and many more. She was a very sociable, outgoing person.

“She became sicker and more fragile, eventually becoming bedbound in 2013. A year prior to that we had carers coming in from an agency, and then it got to the stage where she needed more help.

“I had a very good doctor and eventually he got St Barnabas involved and I started to get the St Barnabas nurses coming in. They came for about three weeks, it wasn’t that long, but they were excellent. Very quickly she was moved into the hospice.

“Stephen (Gurr, the Chaplain) came in and blessed her. They thought she was going to go then. Eventually, I had to go home.

“She carried on, but when I came in on Saturday I didn’t like the look of her. Instead of coming back at about three, for some reason I came back about half past one. She was breathing a bit funny. I called the nurse and there were two nurses there as she slipped away, very peacefully. It was a great relief that she was here at the hospice and I didn’t have to cope on my own, and I was with her when she died.”

After her mother Margaret died, Carole used the St Barnabas House bereavement services and had counselling.

“I found it quite useful actually,” she said. “When I came to the first session I was the first one who didn’t feel as though I was bereaved. When I mentioned it to the counsellor, she said I had already been through that looking after her, because I had lost her well before that time. It had never dawned on me.

“I didn’t think I would need counselling, but it was quite useful and it got things out of my system that I had, which was good.”

Yoga workshop Before taking on the trek, Carole and Gail both need to raise sponsorship of £2,800, and so far Carole has raised £1,786.02.

The pair will be holding a Yoga Workshop on Saturday 14 July at Pulborough Village Hall from 10am to 4pm.

The workshop will feature a varied yoga programme with three BWY teachers, lunch and drinks provided, for £30 per person with all of the proceeds raised going to their fundraising for the trek. There will also be a raffle.

Places must be booked in advance. Please call Carole on 01903 770313 or email her at pickworthc@btinternet.com to book.

If you have been inspired by Carole’s story and would like to sponsor her, please visit her JustGiving page: www.justgiving.com/carole-pickworth.

To find out more about trekking for St Barnabas House, visit www.stbh.org.uk/trek.