Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine

My Haven CHRIS BONINGTON

The legendary mountainee­r, 83, in the sitting room of his Victorian cottage in Cumbria

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1

MUM AND ME

I bought this former farm labourer’s cottage with my late wife Wendy in 1971 as a holiday home, but we liked it so much we moved in permanentl­y.

It’s in a lovely remote spot on the side of a beautiful hill. I’m a Londoner though, and this photo of me, aged four, with my mother Helen was taken in our garden in Hampstead in 1938. She married my father while they were at Oxford, but he wasn’t ready for it and they split up when I was very young. Mum worked full-time but treated me like a miniadult – we’d read Shakespear­e in the evenings and by the age of 16 I’d read most of the English classics.

2

PUT TO THE SWORD

My eldest son Joe gave me this ceremonial sword in

1987 as a memento of my time in the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment. He was convinced I’d had to sell my sword when I left the Army because I was short of money, but that wasn’t the case – I’d never owned a sword. Joe approached the colonel commandant of the regiment, and he kindly invited me to a regimental dinner in France to mark the 70th anniversar­y of the Battle of Cambrai in 1917, where he presented the sword to me. It’s a touching reminder of Joe’s love and gratitude towards me.

3

TOP OF THE WORLD

This ice axe was carried to the very top of Mount Everest by my old friend and fellow mountainee­r Doug Scott in 1975. I led that expedition – the first-ever successful ascent up the south-west face. It was one of the greatest mountain challenges of the era, and five large and very strong expedition­s had previously tried and failed. We had also made an unsuccessf­ul attempt three years earlier, but we learnt a great deal from that and we used those lessons during our second, successful attempt.

4

LITTLE LIFE SAVER

This metal wedge saved my life while I was climbing on Lochnagar, a peak on the Queen’s Balmoral estate, with my half-brother Gerald in 2000. All had gone well until the last stretch. I couldn’t find anywhere to secure my rope, so I swung the picks of my axes into the snow, tied myself to them and started to pull in the rope as Gerald began to climb. But he fell, which catapulted me headlong into space. I was certain I was going to die, but I suddenly stopped – I’d clipped my rope through this wedge on the way up and secured it in a crack in the rock. It saved our lives.

5

A SECOND CHANCE OF LOVE

Here I am with my Chilean-born wife Loreto. I’d known her for years because she was the wife of my friend, the mountainee­r Ian McNaughtDa­vis. He had Alzheimer’s and Loreto nursed him for six years before his death in 2014. I similarly nursed my late wife Wendy for two years before she succumbed to motor neurone disease the same year. Mutual friends then helped bring Loreto and me together, and we married last year.

6

SNAP HAPPY

I realised early on in my career that I was never going to make a living out of climbing, so I started taking photos on my expedition­s for newspaper articles, books and lectures. My photo-journalism career started in 1966 when I joined the team attempting to climb the direct route up the north face of the Eiger in Switzerlan­d. It was below -10˚C, so I had to keep the Pentax camera on the left warm inside my jacket. Later, I upgraded to the Leica on the right, which I took on the first-ever descent of the Blue Nile from its source at Lake Tana in Ethiopia to the Sudanese frontier in 1968.

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