Ataxia affected Ben Spencer climbs Snowdon. Hooray!

Earlier this year Ben completed a challenge to visit all 272 London underground stations and posted photos to his Instagram account @Tube.Snapper to raise awareness of Ataxia, a rare condition affecting 500 children and 10,000 adults in the UK.

Ben is raising funds and awareness for Ataxia UK by trying to get as far up Snowdon using his wheelchair and Rollator. Ben will be using wheelchair-accessible transport including a London Bus, The London Underground, the Elizabeth Line, Mainline Trains and the Snowdon Sherpa bus service to get to base camp in Wales. Ben will then take the Llanberis path, hopefully to the top of the mountain, starting in his wheelchair, then transferring to his Rollator, and for the final push to the top using my adapted walking sticks, supported by a team from Ataxia UK.

Ben with Ataxia used a Wheelchair, rollator, and poles and managed to climb Snowdon?

Ben managed! Climbed up and descended Mount Snowdon – the highest mountain in Wales – in around 16-and-a-half hours using a combination of a wheelchair, rollator and specially adapted walking sticks, describing the experience as “emotional”.

“I ended up having to crawl up the last lot of steps just to get to the top”, the 49-year-old who lives in Buckhurst Hill, Epping Forest, told the PA news agency.

“There was an Ordnance Survey marker at the top, so I sort of pulled myself up that and clung onto it for dear life.

“I felt really excited and I was really elated to get to the top – there were about 20 or 30 people that were waiting for me at the top and I didn’t know these people, but they all started clapping and cheering, so I got a bit emotional.”

Fight Ataxia

While on the hike, he said he took around 100 selfies with people, and described the outpouring of support from people leaving comments and making donations on his JustGiving page – which has exceeded the £5,000 target – as “unbelievable.”

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“I’m so insanely grateful for how the support is spreading awareness for Ataxia and it will enable Ataxia UK to continue supporting people like me and help more people understand the disease.”

Ben Spencer documented how he travelled to Snowdon too, to highlight accessibility issues. Trionic is proud to have taken part in this challenge and Ben wouldn’t have been able to do it without the Veloped, as he himself stated after the completion. "The Veloped was enabling me to get 3/4 of the way up the mountain"

Problem identifying Ataxia

Ben added that one of the “biggest problems” with Ataxia is potentially having to wait for years for a diagnosis.

“I’ve been seeing doctors on and off and the odd neurologist for about 15 years and it took about 15 years for me to get to the point where they diagnosed me with Ataxia because it kept getting mistaken for other things”, he said.

“I eventually got lucky and got a neurologist who knew all about it.”