Ted, an 11-year-old paraplegic boy from Sutton Coldfield, ran into the Princess of Wales three times during the Three Peaks Challenge. He told BBC Radio WM that when he realised who she was, “I just thought it was amazing and incredible.”
Ted was pushed and carried in his wheelchair by his father Pete and 15 other relatives and friends. They were raising money for Molly Ollys, a Warwick-based charity that supports children with life-threatening illnesses. On each mountain the group met Catherine. She chatted with Ted, asked how he was doing and has since donated to his fundraiser.
Pete said the first meeting caught him off guard. He was at the back of the group and knew they had stopped to speak to someone, but not who. “A good 30 seconds must have passed before they called me forward and I was just dumbfounded.” She was in walking clothes, he said, and “I think I might have just walked past her.”
Catherine started the conversation after seeing Ted being carried up the mountain, Pete said. “She was lovely, she was being very motherly to Ted, asking all the questions a mum would ask, seeing if he was warm enough, if he’d got some sleep after the first mountain.” On the second morning she walked past and said “hi Ted”. The group double-took. She had remembered his name.
On his crowdfunding page she wrote that meeting inspiring people like Ted was “one of the real highlights” of the challenge.
A harder walk than planned
The challenge takes in Scafell Pike, Ben Nevis and Snowdon. Pete, a keen mountaineer, said it was “a lot tougher than expected”. Scafell Pike was “absolutely brutal”: the group got wet all morning in 40mph winds. There was snow on top of Ben Nevis. “We went for every season basically across the 30 hours,” he said.
They beat their 30-hour target by 10 minutes, helped by group members running with Ted over the last stretch. “It was very tough but very funny as well because I kept bouncing up and down,” Ted said.
Pete said his son was diagnosed with an aggressive spinal tumour and left paralysed at the age of three, after his legs “just stopped” working one day. Ted’s back hurt, but he was too young to explain it. “Turns out the tumour was doubling in size every 24 hours,” Pete said.
The Molly Ollys fundraiser had a target of 5,000 pounds. It has passed 11,000. “It’s just going crazy, because we bumped into her Royal Highness, it’s got a load of media attention,” Pete said. He hopes it will encourage other children in Ted’s position “to just think outside the box and see what they’re capable of.”
