Norman Croucher OBE

welcome

Welcome to the Norman Croucher website. I hope that you will enjoy browsing through the various pages I have put together to explain who I am and what I do.

As a double leg amputee my mountaineering has certainly been challenging, and the greater the challenge the greater the reward - if you succeed.

One difficulty was choosing targets which were ambitious and at the same time realistic. I achieved my ambition of climbing a mountain of 8,000 metres by many stages and over many years as I explored my physical and mental limits. Time and again there were knock-backs, but winners must have the courage to fail, must get up again and go back to the mountain with a positive attitude. You need to ignore, convert or circumvent the prophets of doom, the faint-hearted, the blockers, the losers, the cynics and that applies not just in mountaineering but also in many other areas of life. There has been an added motivation in that my climbing has been the base for campaigns promoting access, integration and adventure sports for people with disabilities.

Aside from my activities as a writer and motivational speaker giving talks and lectures, more recently my attentions have been focussed on climbing activities for older people and I make an ad hoc input into several organisations concerned with young people. I make no bones about it, I do these things because they give me a sense of purpose; there is nothing self-sacrificing in my work.

Without my mountains, life would certainly have been hollow, and I would not have been asked to put something into the pot of inspiration, from which all with an open mind can drink.

Good luck and happy browsing!