Four people who have never climbed a mountain before, reached the top of Ben Nevis and raised over £6,000 for a baby with brain damage.

A fundraising campaign, with a target of £60,000, has been launched for Elliot Michelson who was born six weeks premature and needs physiotherapy every day.

The brave mountaineers are Elliot’s dad, Nick, his aunt Hope Anderson from Felsted (sister of Elliot’s mum Sophie) and two of Hope’s friends, Penny George and Jenny Cross, both 29.

The money will pay for just six weeks of Elliot’s treatment at Kid’s Physio Works in Colchester.

The National Health Service will fund no more than an hour’s physio a month.

The fund raising goes on. Over this weekend, October 22 and 23, Nuffield Health in Anchor Street, Bishop’s Stortford, is offering an open weekend with free use of the facilities plus a “cycle the channel challenge”, a raffle and a bake off.

The raffle prizes include a year’s free membership of the gym, hotel stays, a family photo shoot, cinema tickets, beauty treatments and afternoon tea.

Describing the climb, Nick Michelson said: “The ascent took five and a half hours, it was a big challenge. It was a long, long, long slog.

“Every time we came to a corner we thought we had got to the top but we hadn’t. People we met coming down said we were nearly at the top but we weren’t.”

The four only stayed at the top for about 20 minutes because they knew it would take them around three and a half hours to get down and they wanted to descend before it got dark.

None of the four had tackled mountaineering before and Nick, an office consultant with a full-time job and two small children (Elliot has a three-year-old brother, Oliver) said he hadn’t even had time to do much training.

Mum Sophie said: “There is no cure for a brain injury, but there are treatments and therapies that can reduce the impact of the condition. These may help Elliot get some independence.”

She added: “We feel so lucky to have Hope’s support. She has worked tirelessly to organise the Ben Nevis walk.”

Elliot’s fundraisers are called the Go Team Elmo. His nick-name is Elmo because he is Elliot Michelson and also because Dr Elmo was the shortened name of a consultant at the hospital where Elliot spent the first six weeks of his life. Hope said: “Penny has done some trekking and mountain walking before, but it was all of our first experiences climbing Ben Nevis and Jen and I were completely inexperienced.

“This is the case for all of the 10 climbers in our group. The four of us were fundraising, and the rest were friends and colleagues who came along for moral support.”

To help Elliot go to: http://just4children.org/children-helped-2016/go-team-elmo/