Flame on the mountains: scouts will create Paralympics fire on summits of UK's highest peaks

Torches will be taken to four capitals and then brought together at Stoke Mandeville
Olympic torch on Mount Snowdon
Getty Images
Ross Lydall @RossLydall15 August 2012

The Paralympic torch will be lit from fires on the summit of the UK’s four highest peaks, it was revealed today as full details were confirmed of the route the flame will take.

Teams of able-bodied and disabled Scouts, including some amputees, will climb Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike, Snowdon and Slieve Donard next Wednesday and make fires by the traditional method of rubbing flint stones together.

The fires will be transferred to miners’ lanterns and brought down from the mountains before being transferred to the UK’s four capital cities for four successive days of celebrations, starting in London on Friday August 24.

Each fire will then be taken to Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, the spiritual home of the Paralympic movement, where they will be united on Tuesday August 28 to create the London 2012 Paralympic Flame.

Later that evening a 24-hour relay will see the flame make the 92-mile trip to London carried by 580 torchbearers, working in teams of five.

It will travel through towns in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire before visiting London landmarks including London Zoo, the Abbey Road zebra crossing, Lord’s cricket ground, Piccadilly Circus, Westminster Abbey, Downing Street and Trafalgar Square,

It will visit Harrow, Barnet, Brent, Westminster, the City of London, Southwark, Lewisham and Barking and Dagenham before touring the five host boroughs: Greenwich, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Waltham Forest and Newham.

It will then be carried to the Olympic Stadium where a cauldron will be lit to mark the start of the London 2012 Paralympic Games on the evening of Wednesday August 29.

Among the torchbearers carrying the flame to London will be five injured servicemen nominated by Prince Harry from the Walking with the Wounded charity.

The five are charity founder Ed Parker, his nephew Harry Parker, who lost both legs after stepping on an IED in Afghanistan, David Wiseman, who was shot in the chest in Afghanistan, co-founder Simon Daglish and his 12-year-old son Felix, who has cerebral palsy. The team will carry the torch along Whitehall. Mr Parker told the Standard: “After the extraordinary success of the Olympic Games, I think the public mood will carry through to the Paralympic Games.

“It’s going to be such a wonderful time to champion everyone who faces a degree of adversity in what can be achieved.

“That mirrors the message we are trying to get out to people. To be given the opportunity to carry the torch means we can continue to raise awareness.”

Mayor Boris Johnson said: “The Paralympic torch relay is the perfect moment to get your flags back out and get behind the incredible athletes taking part as the excitement builds once again right across the capital.”

The London Paralympics is on course to become the first to sell out in the event’s 52-year history.

An astonishing 2.2million tickets have been sold — 400,000 more than the previous record set in Beijing four years ago.

Lord Coe, chairman of the organisers of the Olympics and Paralympics, said: “This is going to be an extraordinary moment for us.”

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