”We wore the same mankini for all three mountains so they took some serious punishment. I got through quite a lot of Vaseline to stay comfortable and my knees are sheer agony now.” Jon decided to take part in the challenge to raise money for people like his son, Jack, 12, who suffers from Usher syndrome – a genetic disorder causing victims to go deaf and blind. Jon and Andy, who has a daughter Molly, 16, who also has Usher syndrome, started their challenge in the early hours of Saturday morning when they climbed Ben Nevis, the highest peak in Scotland.
They completed the 1,344m (4,409ft) in five hours and 40 minutes before driving for seven hours to Cumbria to take on Scafell Pike. And they took four hours and 20 minutes to climb 978m (3,208ft) to reach the top of England’s highest mountain. Jon said: ”It was pretty windy going up Scafell and at the top the temperature with the windchill was minus 12. Despite this we still stripped off and posed in our mankinis. It was so cold I went numb, all over.”
And the pair took just two hours to climb 1,085m (3,560ft) to the top of Snowdon in Wales to complete the challenge. Jon, from Gainsborough, Lincs., and Andy, from Maidenhead, Berks., both wore layers over their mankinis for the ascent but stripped off to their underwear for the final approach to each summit. Andy said: ”We can both proudly say we’ve climbed the three peaks wearing mankinis and as Borat would say, ‘is nice!’.” The pair hope to raise £8,000 for charity Sense, which helps deaf and blind people in the UK.
Jon's page. Andy's page.
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