The glorious, heart-lifting proof you can fall crazily in love at any age
Everest hero Sir Chris Bonington, 83, was devastated when his wife of 52 years died. But then something wonderful happened ...
AFTER an hour or so with Sir Chris Bonington and his glamorous Chilean wife Loreto, I’m beginning to feel a bit, well, like a gooseberry.
Not because they aren’t the most charming couple you could ever meet. Or the most hospitable — pressing on me cups of tea, sandwiches and slices of cold lamb left over from their ‘very, very late’ dinner party last night.
There’s even the offer of a sun- dappled stroll near their cosy Lake District home.
It’s more that, after three years together and two years of marriage, they are still so palpably, glowingly, passionately in love that they can barely keep their hands off each other.
When I arrived at 11.30am they had only just made it out of bed, for goodness’ sake.
They kiss and cuddle and hold hands at every opportunity. They finish each other’s sentences, share intimate details about their romance and they can’t stop grinning.
When they aren’t actually touching, they just gaze at each other in awestruck wonder.
‘Every day is like a honeymoon,’ beams Chris, all pink and glowy. ‘It’s wonderful waking up snuggled together. We’re like a pair of teenagers!’
We should be talking about his fourth autobiography, Ascent, but somehow the burning love from out of the blue which sent them both spinning, seems so much more pressing.
‘ We fell in love so very quickly,’ says Loreto. ‘ We walked into each other’s lives and BOOM!’
‘It was like an explosion, ’ adds Chris before Loreto continues.
‘A tsunami! It really was. And the first time we kissed — oh! He is such a good kisser!’
Er, well . . . yes, gosh. But, equally, how bloody marvellous. What a fantastic turn-up for the books.
Sir Chris, Britain’s most celebrated mountaineer and author of 20 books, is nearly 84, Loreto is 70. Both have been married before and suffered terrible loss.
For 52 years, Chris was married to Wendy, mother of his two grown-up sons, Joe and Rupert (their first son, Conrad, drowned when he was three years old).
Wendy was a constant and unerring support as he disappeared for months on end, year after year, decade after decade, on dangerous mountaineering expeditions, chalking up endless ‘firsts’, numerous records and a good few extremely close shaves.
He’s made 19 expeditions to the Himalayas, including four to Everest.
‘She never got cross; she never ever put anything in my way,’ he says.
WITH Wendy’s support and his reckless determination, he became a national institution, In 1996, he was knighted for services to mountaineering.
Their marriage was as solid and enduring as Everest, K2 and the north face of the Eiger all rolled into one.
‘We had some terrific times. I loved her so very, very much,’ he says.
And then, in 2012, Wendy was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and Chris says he felt he’d been hit in the stomach with a kettle bell. He put his life on hold and nursed her for two years until she died in July 2014.
‘I’m not a natural carer,’ he says. ‘I am very impatient and always have been.’
The worst bit was the middle phase of her illness, when Wendy’s speech was going and it was increasingly difficult to understand her. ‘I would lose my patience and snap, and then be very tearful,’ he says quietly.
After the funeral, when everyone was gone and suddenly he was all alone, the grief came in great waves. ‘I hated coming back to this empty house. I would howl,’ he chokes, eyes brimming and pink.
‘He is a very emotional man,’ explains Loreto.
She, meanwhile, spent years nursing her late husband — an old friend of Chris’s and a fellow climber, Ian McNaughtDavis — who was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Chris missed his funeral because he was too busy looking after Wendy.
Neither thought they’d meet anyone, let alone fall headlong in love again. Particularly not so quickly — barely eight months after Wendy died.
‘ It was very, very soon,’ agrees Chris. ‘So of course my family raised an eyebrow or two. But Loreto soon captured them.’
Of course she did. She’s warm and gorgeous and funny and clearly worships the ground Chris walks on.
He remains tall (he doesn’t seem to have shrunk with age), rangy, springy of step and tanned, with that fabulous beard, blue eyes and beautiful hands.
‘I always say he has fantastic hands — and very manly, too!’ Loreto tells me.
At first she worried it was all ‘a bit too soon’. But then her priest assured her that people from happy marriages with no regrets go through the grieving process sooner, and she relaxed into it. This pair are so infectiously besotted that it’s hard to believe theirs wasn’t an obvious match. She, a total glamour puss who split her time between Kensington and St Tropez; he, a rugged mountaineer, happiest in Berghaus gear and muddy boots, yomping about his beloved Lake District or working quietly in his upstairs study.
‘I’m very shy,’ he says. ‘I lack confidence, and social engagements scare me.’
He was also rather intimidated by Loreto’s beauty. But, undeterred, mutual friends kept shepherding them together.
Finally, the planets were aligned one night at the Alpine Club Annual Dinner in London.
They talked all night (‘The people either side of us didn’t get a look in,’ Chris laughs) and walked out hand in hand to the bus stop (‘He took me home on the bus! On our first date!’ Loreto says).
They kissed for the first time while waiting for the Number 9 and then all the way back to her house.
‘And then we went to bed,’ Chris says. ‘It was completely natural.’
Cue lots of hot, pink looks across the table.
And so, er, to the book, which, rather touchingly, is dedicated to the three women in Chris’s life: Wendy (whom he insists would be thrilled he’s found such happiness again), Loreto and Helen, his extremely complicated and super-bright mother who died about ten years ago.
‘We were very close but it was only when she died that I realised what a wonderful mother she was,’ he says.
Maybe, but his childhood sounds awful.
His mother and father, who was a founder member of the SAS, met at Oxford where, together, they ‘made whoopee’ and did virtually no studying.
She left with a Third, he got kicked out. They got married, had Chris and, after a series of rows over his heavy drinking which culminated in Helen attacking him with a poker, he vanished out of their lives when his son was nine months old.
Chris, who went to boarding school from the age of five, was then brought up largely by his grandmother while his mother worked in an advertising company and joined the Communist Party.
‘At that point, I think mum decided she’d had enough of men,’ he says.
ENTER Margo, a friend of his mum’s who worked at Soviet Weekly. Ostensibly she moved in as a lodger — she officially slept in the kitchen — but clearly she was more than that.
‘I have a vague memory of coming down one morning and experiencing a sense of shock at seeing something, but what it is, I don’t remember,’ says Chris.
The three lived together for several years, discussing politics, holding Shakespeare reading sessions in the evening and attending Communist meetings together until Chris had had enough.
‘I found the people incredibly boring,’ he says.
Sadly, things with Margo didn’t work out. She fell in love with a male colleague from Soviet Weekly who was Russian — ‘ almost certainly KGB’ — and, when he was sent back to Russia in disgrace, she committed suicide.
Then Helen tried to kill herself, too, was sectioned and spent a long stretch in a psychiatric hospital.
Chris shuttled between his grandmother and boarding school, where he describes himself as a ‘slow starter’ and mildly dyslexic.
‘It was emotionally confusing,’ he says wryly.
It sounds desperate, more like. It’s a wonder, with such a rolling cast of players, that he’s been able to form such enriching and uncomplicated relationships with women — he fell in love with Wendy within five minutes of meeting her and never strayed — and make so many enduring friendships over the years.
But he has firm views on life’s challenges.
‘ We all have roughly the same luck,’ he insists. ‘ The trick is to maximise the good bits and weather the bad. No point in wallowing in sadness and spilt milk. You have to get on with things — live in
‘We walked into each other’s lives and BOOM!’
the present.’ Chris has done a lot of ‘weathering’ over the years. As well as the death of his toddler son Conrad — he died when Chris was away on an expedition and he still can’t talk about his first-born without weeping — he has lost many close friends, including climbers Nick Estcourt, P eter Boardman, Joe Tasker and Mick Burke. One on pretty much every one of his major expeditions.
‘Of course you ’re saddened by their loss,’ he says. ‘But we were all playing the same game and knew just how dangerous it was.’ His love for mountains started when, as a teenager, he went up Snowdon in Wales with a school mate in their uniforms and school macs and got caught in a mini-avalanche.
The terrified friend never went near a mountain again, but Chris was hooked. ‘I love everything about mountaineering,’ he says. ‘The pure athleticism of climbing with that terrific element of risk , the beauty of the hills, the feel of the rock , the air , the friendships you make — the complete thing.’
While many of his peers gave up serious climbing when they married and had children, it didn’t occur to him to stop.
‘I never even thought of it,’ he says. ‘I’ve never regretted it. Is it selfish? It must be, but that’s what I am. I’m still here!’
Over the decades, while his beloved mountains remain stead - fast, the sport, the kit, the condi - tions have all changed almost beyond recognition.
When he first stood near the top of the world, in 1975, only one expedition was allowed up Everest each climbing season (between May and September). Chris finally reached the peak of Everest in 1985 at his fourth attempt.
Today, between 70 and 80 commercial expeditions are on the moun - tain at a time, meaning up to 1,000 people camp at Base Camp (‘It’s like a small town!’) and hundreds camp at South Col, waiting for a window of good weather to make a dash for the top.
‘I’d have thought it is absolutely horrible climbing Everest these days,’ Chris says. ‘It doesn ’t feel very adventurous following a fixed line to the top. you’re certainly not doing it yourself, because every - thing’s done for you.’
His last major climb — the 137m Old Man of Hoy in the Orkneys, 48 years after he’d been the first man to climb it — was in memory of Wendy, to mark his 80th birthday and to raise funds for motor neurone disease charities.
It was cathartic and thrust him back into the public eye, some - thing he adores.
‘Of course, I love being famous!’ he laughs.
Today, though, mountains are more for looking at than conquer - ing. ‘ If I never climb another Himalayan mountain, it wouldn ’t worry me. I’m a bit creaky for scrambling over rocks — my balance isn’t great,’ he says. ‘But we’re planning a trek in Nepal. Loreto loves trekking.’
Unlike his first marriage, during which Chris was away for up to six months a year, he and Loreto seem practically glued together.
They walk for up to three hours a day and go everywhere together — to his book festivals, lectures and exhibitions and to her home in the South of France. They even do 45 minutes of Pilates together each morning.
‘We’ve barely spent a night apart since we met,’ she says happily.
When they are forced apart, they phone, text and WhatsApp each other constantly.
Falling as passionately and com - pletely in love in later life is envia - ble, but also bittersweet.
‘I feel totally buoyant and glowy , and it’s a wonderful way to feel,’ says Chris. ‘But second love is very intense because you realise that time is no longer infinite.
‘In ten years’ time I’ll be 94. There’s no time for routine, no time to waste. So we’re cramming it all in. It’s so important. I look at my friends and they’re all falling apart. I want to remain fit. There’s an incentive.’
There certainly is. The minute he’s out of earshot rummaging excitedly in his equipment shed, Loreto whips me aside and whis - pers: ‘He’s an absolutely fantastic man. There’s not an inch of arro - gance. He’s kind and good and like a human being should be.
‘I had no idea — that he was a national treasure, or a British institution, or how energetic he was, but I am looking after him extremely well.’
Chris, meanwhile, looks jolly pleased and proud. A really lovely man who, quite frankly , can ’ t believe his luck.
Ascent is out in paperback at £9.99 (simon & schuster).