He says: "My field of vision closed in around me, similar to being blinkered, and I can see only a small hole of light and shadow now. Next came many years of self-destruction when I drank too much among other things."īy the age of 36, Red had just five per cent vision and today this has reduced to two per cent. I genuinely felt I could only deal with the diagnosis by myself and I pushed people away. I gave up riding my bike – and the freedom that had given me – then climbing, cricket, rugby and cross country running. "But one by one I had to stop what I enjoyed doing because I couldn't see. I was also part of the university's legendary Night Climbers, scaling tall buildings after dark. I had become a reasonable climber by then and I had started leading HVS routes. "There was so much about my life that involved sport and the challenge of pushing my limits. "I went into freefall from then and I didn't really stop until about 10 years ago," admits Red. He was told he would be blind within a decade.
The week before his 20th birthday and amid the buzz of being an English undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, Red learned he had a degenerative condition called retinitis pigmentosa. He could have no idea that just six years later he would receive the devastating news that he was going blind. "I knew the cadets did a summer climbing trip each year so it seemed like an obvious place to start," explains Red, who was brought up in Sussex. For Red, 49, of London, the dream started in the early eighties when he watched in awe a BBC documentary about the first ascent in 1966 of the 137m tall Orcadian stack by Patey and Chris Bonington.Īt the age of 13, Red (short for Redmond) had no reason to disbelieve his aspirations to one day follow suit – and he set about learning some of the required skills by joining a school cadet force.
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