Experience: I’ve climbed Mount Everest 20 times

In 1996 doctors told me I wouldn’t walk again unaided, but in 2022 I took the record for the most Everest summits by a non-Sherpa I grew up in Slough, Berkshire, in a bungalow beside a farm.

My father was a scout leader, and I was always outside, building dams and dens, sleeping out and hiding in trees. In my teens, family holidays were two weeks in Wales. At home, nature was my playground. When I was 17, a school friend took me to a climbing wall where he was a regular. I loved the physicality of it and trying to work out where to put my hands and…