TNB Night Owl – Stuart Kettell

Brussels Sprouts. Photo by Eric Hunt.

The tallest mountain in Wales is Mount Snowdon. It rises to 3,560 feet above sea level and was used by Sir Edmund Hillary to prepare for his legendary ascent of Everest.

It is not as difficult to climb as it used to be. There are six charted walking paths and even a road that will allow visitors a scenic car trip toward the top of the mountain. If you don’t have a car and are not athletic, there’s a railway system to the top which has been open for more than a hundred years. The views are considered some of the most beautiful in Wales, and the locals want people to be able to appreciate their landscape.

Here’s some drone footage of the railway, to give you an idea:

Humans enjoy overcoming adversity, however, and if that adversity doesn’t exist, we’re often prepared to create some.

Enter Stuart Kettell. He spent four days climbing Mount Snowdon in 2014… which sounds fairly reasonable for climbing a mountain, until one learns that the typical walking trip to the top and back down again, via the established paths, takes about eight hours.

Why did it take Stuart so long? Because he’d given himself a bit of a disadvantage. He decided to push something in front of him the entire time.

A Brussels sprout.

Since that would be a little too easy, though, he hindered himself further by restricting its motion to being pushed only by his nose.

It took four days, 22 sprouts, and it earned Kettell a bit of passing fame, and it earned him a record that is unlikely to be beaten because it’s hard to imagine anyone else bothering to do it.

Apparently there were no more important uses of his time. To his considerable credit, however, he used his effort to raise money for cancer research.

Question of the night: What would you do with a four-day vacation and no prior obligations?

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About AlienMotives 1991 Articles
Ex-Navy Reactor Operator turned bookseller. Father of an amazing girl and husband to an amazing wife. Tired of willful political blindness, but never tired of politics. Hopeful for the future.