Interview with a Paraclimber – Hampshire’s Laurence Morgan

With the ClimbScotland
Paraclimbing Festival on the horizon, one competitor has driven all
the way up from Hampshire to take part.

Laurence Morgan suffered a brain injury at the age of 12 and suffered paralysis from the neck down and faced a long period of rehabilitation and had to learn how to use his body and communicate all over again.

He suffers from
spasticity of his left arm which severely limits movement as well as
a weakness in his right leg due to reformation of his tibia following
surgery.

Despite his, admitted,
physical limitations, Laurence decide – egged-on by some friends –
a year or so ago, that climbing was the sport for him….

We met up in Princes’
Street Gardens for a wee chat and some photos….

Paraclimber Laurence Morgan is in Edinburgh for the Paraclimbing Festival at the EICA

Tell us a bit about Laurence Morgan –

I am a middle child,
with two sisters, and I live in a tiny village called Kingsley in
Hampshire. It has one pub and a church, so it’s peaceful and a
highlight is a pheasant walking through the garden.

I’m an artist, swim
teacher and para-climber. I love Star Trek, and only really like
foreign films – I can’t speak any foreign languages – and Scandi
police dramas.

The brain injury leaves
me no memory of my life prior to 12 and I can’t access memories or I
encode them wrong. That’s why I explore emotions though my drawing. A
natural ‘leftie’, once I’d discovered I could draw quite accurately,
I re-learned to use my right – non-dominant – hand.

‘Chute’. Charcoal drawing by Laurence Morgan

When I can, I work with
the homeless at ‘Crises Open Christmas’ in London, and that’s been
for the past fifteen or so years.

I love and feed off
learning how to bond or win over and capture the imaginations of the
kids I teach.

Where do you fit into the climbing world? –

As a sport paraclimbing is newer and fast expanding. In the last year I’ve been on the podium twice at competitions, finishing in 2nd place.

With
each competition there’s excitingly fresh and new awesome climbers,
which brings more competition, but its super for the sport and I have
ramped up my training to try and hopefully keep up my attainments.

I
compete in the RP1 category. There are three groupings with the ‘R’
(reach) and ‘P’ (power) section. The ‘1’ signals that my reach and
power is lesser than an RP2 or RP3 climber.

I’m
very excited for Sept 8th at EICA and have two other UK Nationals in
October and November.

There’s
tremendous cognitive resource needed for the tiniest of things which
leaves me too fatigued a lot of the time. Which is what drives me –
esp. with climbing. Not wanting to succumb, and resigning to limiting
factors.

Laurence was having a couple of days in the Capital before his event.

Having
met and spent time with Laurence, he comes over as a determined
individual with a great sense of humour and one who has not let the
accident he suffered at 12 define what he does or who he is. Best of
luck to him for Sunday.

Laurence’s Instagram ‘presence’ can be found @laurenceparaclimbing and @laurencemorganart

The Scottish Paraclimbing Festival is taking place this Sunday 8th Sept. at the EICA at Ratho. The day also sees the finals of the Scottish Lead Climbing Championship and details of both events can be found at http://www.climbscotland.net/