Paralysed in pool dive, now Jon reaches the summit of Pen-y-fan
IN MAY 2007, Jonathan Hobbs had a lot to be happy about. The 22-year-old was a trainee quantity surveyor and a keen rugby player for his local team, Pontyclun RFC.
Described as “one of the boys”, he was on one of his first holidays abroad with his group of friends in Magaluf, Spain when, on the first morning, he went for a swim.
“I woke up and went straight to the pool,” he said. “I hadn’t gone to the induction where they told us not to dive in the shallow end of the pool.”
He dived in, but suffered a huge injury and had to be pulled to safety by his friends.
“I was still awake, floating face down in the pool. I didn’t know what had happened at first, and obviously, a state of panic kicked in. Luckily, my friends were around the pool and two of them jumped in and got me. I was pulled to the side and I remember the paramedics coming but after that, it’s a bit of a blur.”
Jon had broken his neck and had sustained spinal injuries.
Then 22, he spent the next 17 days in a hospital in Spain, before he was transferred back to the UK. From there, he spent nine months in a rehabilitation centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire where he learnt the extent of his injuries.
“Life was bleak,” Jon said. “I was paralysed from the neck down. I couldn’t speak as I had a tracheostomy, and every part of me was completely paralysed. After three months at Stoke Mandeville, I started to improve slightly – I got off the tracheostomy and was able to breathe by myself, I also started getting slight twitches in my shoulders and arms. We started working on the muscles that were twitching to improve them.”
However, it transpired Jon had sustained a complete injury, which meant that there was no movement or feeling below the level of his spinal cord injury. As a result, he was paralysed from the chest down.
According to Jon, his time at the rehabilitation centre would see him
Reporter go through some “dark days”, but also gave him the push he needed during his recovery thanks to continuing support he received from the staff at the rehabilitation centre, as well as from his family and friends who visited.
He said: “At first, it seemed that life was going to be living back home with my parents. I wasn’t going to be able to live independently. But Stoke Mandeville was amazing – they opened my eyes to everything. Even though I had sustained spinal injury, they showed me that it was possible for me to live independently with carers. It completely changed my mindset.
“It was tough at the start, but I found that I was very fortunate as well. Being a part of a rugby club meant that I had a network of friends.
“Between my family and friends, I would have someone always visiting me. They were my driving force. Even though I had visitors all the time, I was also left to deal with myself. I had no choice but to get on with it. I think it did help going there, focusing on my rehabilitation, my physio, my occupational therapy and it kept me busy.
“Sometimes, I would have good days, I’d have some great days but then I would also have my bad days.
During those bad days, I had to dig into those dark places and test myself. At one point, I had a meeting with a fertility clinic while I was there. I was only young, and I wasn’t thinking about children at the time, but then they said that there was a very high chance that I wasn’t able to have children when I was older.”
After nine months at the rehabilitation centre, Jon returned to Wales where he stayed at a respite centre in Cowbridge for a year, before moving into his own home in 2009, with carers there to aid him. “That was a massive milestone,” he said.
“I think you get institutionalised a bit, in the fact you become comfortable in your setting where there’s always someone around in a respite centre or hospital. It was a bit scary, but then that feeling fades out, it’s a completely different world living on your own and the freedom that comes with it.”
Now, 39, Jon has limited arm function and no wrist or hand movement.
He is dad to four children – Ellis, 17, Alfie 12, Jenson,eight, and Eira, four.
Two of his sons have followed in their father’s footsteps and are rugby players for Pontyclun RFC.
Jon works as an estimator for a building contractor and lives with his partner, Cara, who he is set to marry in July of this year.
“I met Cara at the respite centre,” he explained. “We became friends and then we became best friends for 12 years. I had a team of carers and Cara was one of them. One of my sons from a previous relationship was very young at the time and I needed help looking after him. Cara was there and helped me a lot.
“We went from being in a friendship to a relationship. Not often can you find a relationship formed from a friendship like this, but she has become a massive part of my life and now we are getting married in July.”
But before then, Jon has been preparing for another milestone, one which saw him reach the summit of the highest mountain in south Wales on Saturday – with a little help from his friends.
He reached the top of Pen-y-Fan in Bannau Brycheiniog as part of a charity fundraiser in a specially adapted wheelchair created for the epic challenge by Jon’s engineer brother, Jamie.
More than 30 members of his friends and family turned out to help him get up and down the peak, including good friend Lloyd Collier.
“I met Lloyd after the accident while I was at the respite centre,” Jon explained. “He must’ve been around 15 or 16 doing some work experience over there. His late uncle also had a spinal injury.
“He used to come in and talk to me, I would ask him what he wanted to be when he was older and he would say that he wanted to be a doctor. I thought he was just a young boy with big dreams at the time, but fair play to Lloyd, he went on to university and became a doctor.”
Lloyd, who is also from Pontyclun, is now an emergency medicine consultant currently working in Australia.
Although Lloyd lives many miles away from Wales, his late uncle Alun and Jon are never far away from his thoughts.
In 2019, Lloyd and a fellow medic named Louis Snellgrove set a new Guinness World Record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe by tandem bike to raise funds for Spinal Research and the Brain Foundation.
Starting and finishing in Adelaide in Australia, they cycled through 23 countries including Russia, Mongolia, India, Spain and the US and covered over 29,000km in 283 days. Six days after the Pen-y-Fan challenge, Lloyd will travel to the Sahara to tackle the Marathon des Sables – again to raise money for Spinal Research.
In an attempt to thank and support Lloyd before his marathon, as well as raise money for the Spinal Research charity, Jon decided to take part in his own challenge.