SHE became the youngest woman to scale Mount Everest and on Friday she urged the pupils of Swindon Academy to reach for even greater heights when she officially opened their brand new climbing wall.

The brainchild of school Duke of Edinburgh Award expedition leader Mark Benn, mountain climber Bonita Norris officially cut the ribbon to the school’s impressive new piece of equipment, and urged pupils to push themselves in order to reach the heady heights of success.

She said: “I started climbing when I was 20 years old, so you have all got a massive head start on me. During my time as a climber I have spent a lot of my time living in tents in very precarious positions up mountains. They have been some of the best experiences of my life, I just wish  had found climbing when I was younger because I could have been doing it for much longer.”

She began her climb up Mount Everest just two years after discovering her new passion after attending a Friday night lecture at university on a whim.

She said: “When I arrived at the bottom of Mount Everest I looked up and I thought, what is little old me from Wokingham doing trying to climb Everest? I felt I had bitten off more than I could chew.

“Everest taught me so many other lessons, all about starting at the beginning of a journey and trusting that you can go so much further. Set yourself challenges that are out of reach and you will be forced to go on journeys that push you and test you. When you most want to give up, remember that you have so much more to give.”

School principal Ruth Robinson praised the efforts of Mark Benn to bring the climbing wall about. She said: “We are very lucky at the academy to have some amazing teachers and having the wall here today is because the teachers want the very best for you. It was more than a year ago that Mr Benn started talking to me about the possibility of having a climbing wall and I never thought I would be here today about to open the best climbing wall in Swindon.”