Former serviceman handcycles to Everest Base Camp

A former serviceman who was paralysed in a crash has handcycled to Everest Base Camp, with the team raising about £35,000 for spinal cord injury research.

Ollie Thorn, 37, from Peaslake, Surrey, reached Base Camp last Sunday and arrived back in the UK on Thursday.

During his two-week expedition, he travelled at altitudes ranging from about 3,000m (9,842.5ft) to more than 5,200m (17060.3ft), where oxygen levels are reduced and conditions are extreme.

Money raised is going to the charity Wings for Life, which supports spinal cord injury research, with Thorn hoping advances in treatment will one day allow him to walk his daughter, now aged two months, up the aisle.

He spent two years preparing for the challenge, which began in Tibet on 18 April, using a handcycle - a bicycle powered by the arms rather than the legs - throughout the route.

Thorn used a hypoxic training machine in the UK to help him acclimatise.

Describing it as a privilege to see "such a beautiful part of the world", he said being in such a vast landscape made him feel "small and insignificant".

Paralysed from the chest down, he powers the bike with his shoulders, chest and arms, and to his knowledge he is the first person to have completed the journey of about 435 miles (700km) entirely by handcycle.

Thorn recalled how the team reached base camp and had time to take photographs, eat and visit a monastery, before the weather closed in and they returned through "a bit of a blizzard".

Now looking forward to spending time with his wife and two children, Thorn hopes the expedition will help challenge assumptions about disability.

"I didn't realise how negatively I viewed disability until I viewed myself through that lens," he said.

"You can still create an incredible life."

Perry Redgrave, a friend of Thorn's and a personal injury partner at legal firm Stewarts, said Thorn was an officer-in-training at Sandhurst when a car pulled out in front of his motorbike in June 2012.

Thorn suffered more than 40 broken bones, a spinal cord injury, and was in a coma for a month, before he had rehabilitation at the Ministry of Defence Headley Court centre and later privately.

He said that Thorn went on to race with the Armed Forces para-snowsport team after his injury.

"Sports are so important to people for fitness and mental health and making friends - Ollie proved being in a wheelchair shouldn't stop you doing that."

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