TO TOUGH IT OUT IN HIGHLAND WILDERNESS
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and producer, and they kind of looked at one another and they said, ‘ Well it would be good if you did.’“I thought, ‘Oh my goodness’, but I desperately wanted to do it at that time, so I said, ‘All right, fine. I’ll do it.’ Then I went home and thought, ‘ Oh my God, I’m 83. Climbing a mountain – what am I talking about?’”
Sheila admits f ilming days of walking across the Scot t ish count r yside was a lmost as challenging as the climb of Suilven itself – a 731m mountain which is famed for its unique outline.
But she was spurred on by the rest of the cast and crew – including co-star Kevin Guthrie.
She said: “To begin with, we had to go across a kind of wilderness – miles of bog and snakes, and toads, and God knows what else. “That was terribly exhausting. “Eventual ly we came to the mountain and there was this precipice.
“The first assistant took me aside and said, ‘Sheila, this is your last chance. Because if you start going up, that’s it, we’ve got to go through with it.’ I thought, ‘ Oh God. I don’t think I can do it’, because I was so exhausted from ploughing across all this countryside.
“Then I saw the crew. They were laden with camera and sound equipment and stuf f , clambering up this thing, and I thought, ‘I can’t let them down. We’ve got this far. I’ve just got to go through with it.’”
Sheila admits she found the whole experience uplifting.
She said: “We got to one level of the mountain and looked down and there was this amazing landscape.
“What is extraordinary is, it’s wilderness – it’s not beautiful – it’s just spectacular.
“I can remember feeling absolutely at one with nature. I didn’t feel diminished by it.
“You expect that something as huge as the mountains of Scotland to make you feel minuscule – but I didn’t feel that at all. I just felt part of something magnificent.”
Sheila received high praise from her colleagues on the film set.
Edie’s director Simon Hunter, who
“Watching Sheila taught me that you can really do anything if you put your mind to it.
“It’s never too late to embark on a different adventure, to try something you’ve never tried before or actually that you felt you are too old to.
“She was out in the middle of the night.
“She was out in the rain, in the storms.
“She was cycling, which she hadn’t done for years. She was rowing, which I don’t think she has ever done before.
“It’s phenomenal what she’s done, and I couldn’t imagine how many other people would do that.
“She was leading the army on the assault on this climb.”
We had to go across miles of bog and snakes, toads, and God knows what