The ManicaPost
MOST folk at 85 would be content with a bit of pottering – but here’s one living the high life … Trish Wagstaff spends her days taking on all sorts of daring activities including skydiving, paragliding, abseiling and even wing walking. The fearless widow has raised more than £150000 for charity after a decade of stunts.
Trish, who had a hip replacement in 2002, said: “A lot of my friends and family think I’m absolutely bonkers. I started doing it a year after my husband died, but if he had been alive he would have said, ‘No you won’t.’
“My son came along and took photos when I was swimming with sharks. I think he was more nervous than me. It’s no more dangerous than crossing the road when a car is coming.”
Trish, of Appleton, Oxon, first got the daredevil bug when she swam with sharks at Blue Planet Aquarium at Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. She has also been on the longest zipwire in Europe and performed a catapulted paraglide. Then there was a 100m abseil down the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.
But Trish is no stranger to danger. Husband Peter was a major in the Scots Guards and the couple lived in war zones with their children Sheena and Keith. She added: “As an army wife in dangerous places, you knew when danger was real.
“When you had a gun pointed at you, you knew the bullets were real. During the war between the Greeks and the Turks in Cyprus, they were firing across our children’s primary school. It was terrifying. It was completely out of our control.“Our children’s lives were in danger.”
Trish urged other pensioners to swap the sedentary lifestyle for a bit of action.
She said: “An awful lot of people in their 70s have said to me, ‘I can’t do it, I’m far too old.’ I would encourage pensioners to stop saying ‘I’m old’ and get up and do something.”—Mirror Online
