Wainwrights
Meet the five-year-old climbing every peak in the Lake District – and get mum Susie’s advice on how to harness young ambition.
How mum set up daughter Marley-Rose for a lifetime’s love of the outdoors and adventure.
I’m a fitness instructor, mountain leader and kids running coach
– and mum to Marley-Rose, who’s five, and Kobe, three-and-a-half. I’ve been on my own from when they were very young, so I used to take them out in my double running stroller. We’d pack picnics and my eldest would do exercises with me and run little distances alongside the pram. In fact she was running as soon as she could walk!
I want both my children to grow up adoring the outdoors as much as me.
Marley-Rose bagged her first Wainwright, Loughrigg, when she was one-and-a-half. A long way for little legs, but I could see how fit she was from her runs.
As she’s got older I’ve taken her up bigger hills.
MarleyRose loves the fells, loves the adventure and meeting other walkers and going to the pub after to chat with all the locals and have a big pub meal. Why wouldn’t kids enjoy the same rewards we do after a big walk?
On her fourth birthday I took her up Helvellyn and we had birthday cake at the summit.
She even wanted a Helvellyn cake which I was thrilled to make for her! Maybe next time we head up we’ll go via Striding Edge!
Since then she has summited some of the highest peaks in the Lakes
– Blencathra, Skiddaw, Scafell Pike and even Coniston Old Man in winter conditions with her own crampons on! Now we’re doing a few lower level ones as her little brother gets going – and Marley-Rose has decided she wants to be in the Mountain Rescue when she’s older, and to live in the mountains. Job done!