The BSW Timber Fort William Mill Manager has ran the equivalent of 400 Ben Nevis treks to raise money for his local football club.

Olly Stephen has certainly taken the past year in his stride, battling the Highlands’ harsh weather conditions to pound the pavement around Lochaber for over 1654 miles, all for the love of the beautiful game.

The grueling challenge was undertaken to raise much needed funds for local football club Fort William FC, once infamously dubbed “the worst football team in Britain” after a 707-day winless drought, and who’s Claggan Park homeground sits nestled in the foothills of the Ben Nevis mountain range.

The miles Olly notched up throughout the course of 2020 is the equivalent to hiking Scotland’s highest peak Ben Nevis an enormous 400 times and has helped raise over £2000 for the Highland club.

Of the challenge, Olly said: “I think the days where I found it the hardest was when I was tired from work. I would try and find a half-an-hour slot each day but some days I would sit down on the sofa and start watching TV, and then you think ‘I’m not really in the mood to go and do this’.

“Once you are out and doing it it’s fine, but it’s that thought of getting up, getting out and doing it.

“That was probably the hardest thing, knowing very single day I have got to go and do it. If you plan ahead its fine but its’s those days where you feel more tired that it’s not as easy.”

As well as juggling managing the UK’s largest sawmill with family life, Olly has been the club’s under-13 coach for the last six years and says the money will be a gamechanger.

He added: “Lots of people give up their time for free to help run the club and train the boys at all levels. There are always financial challenges that the club faces, being so far geographically away from the other teams we play. Kit for the boys to train and play in, along with other training equipment and not least the charges for hire of the facilities such as an Astro pitch can really add up.

“I couldn’t believe the support from the local community. There was lots of people who don’t have anything to do with it and were donating quite a lot of money which was good.

“For people to give that much is massive. It’s brilliant.”

Fort William K2 mill is BSW’s largest site and produces over quarter of a million cubic metres of sawn timber every year.

For more info on our Fort William operation please click here, or to view vacancies at this site, click here.