Michael Anderson, 75, is deafblind but won't let that stop him hiking 200 miles across Scotland over 16 days to raise money for a good cause

It all started in January last year, I asked my daughter Jane and her partner Nina what I could do to fundraise for Deafblind Scotland and after a while Nina came up the possibility of doing a triathalon. I did that in September last year, but Nina didn’t seem to think that was sufficient in itself, so we ended up doing the kilomathon in Edinburgh, which was 6.5km, and then we decided on this hike.

I intend to walk from Iona to St Andrews over 16 days, most of it will be wild camping but there will be occasional stops at hostels or hotels. The route is called St Columba’s Way, so we’ve named the hike Michael’s Way because I tend to do everything my own way anyway. It’s all in aid of Deafblind Scotland’s new learning and development centre.

The best bit about the hike is going to be arriving at St Andrews in one piece. I did do camping when I was in the Scouts but that’s over 60 years ago

Michael Anderson

I’m deafblind myself. I’m profoundly blind and I have severe hearing impairment, I wear two powerful hearing aids. I’ve been with Deafblind Scotland since 1997. Undoubtedly, as a result of being a member for Deafblind Scotland, the world opened up for me. I was judged as blind at the age of 33 and I took early retirement at the age of 37. For more-or-less 20 years, I was doing very little, I was living in the countryside with my wife and helping to look after the family.

We found out about Deafblind Scotland in 1997 and everything took off from then. It got me involved in various meetings and gave me a bit of an interest rather than just being cooped up in my own wee world and my family.

It’s hard for people with dual sensory impairment, the bulk of the population in that category will be elderly but quite a lot of our members are people who were affected at an earlier age. As a disability it’s what we call a low-incident disability but it’s very isolating because if you can’t see people, you can’t go up to them and introduce yourself. If you’re having difficulty hearing, you can’t really carry out a normal conversation, especially if there’s a lot of background noise.

The best bit about the hike is going to be arriving at St Andrews in one piece. I did do camping when I was in the Scouts but that’s over 60 years ago, I tried it out last Saturday night and it wasn’t all that bad. I think the only problem is the height of the tent, so you can’t stand up to put your trousers on, you’ve got to do it lying down. But, having done it once, I know what I’m doing now. The bed itself and the air mattress are quite comfortable. Nina’s been in touch with a company that specialises in dry food for camping and they’ve given us a £200 supply.

Obviously doing the actual 16-days of constant walking will provide a big sense of achievement, but I also hope to raise £15,000. Those are the two things I’d like to be able to achieve and then to see Deafblind Scotland to get this new building off the ground.

Deafblind Scotland became a charity in its own right in 2001 and one of the things the members said at the time was that we’d like to have a new building of our own. The current building that we’re in is old tenement shops that have been converted into offices but it’s not really accessible. Some of our membership are in wheelchairs and also the lighting is poor and those who use BSL require critical lighting, not too much or too little, just right. We can tailor make a brand new building to our requirements. So, that would be a really great thing.

Michael and his team set off on 6 May from Iona. Support his fundraising effort.