A daredevil grandmother has spent her retirement swimming with sharks, jumping out of planes and paragliding.
Trish Wagstaff, 85, from Appleton in Oxfordshire, has performed a charity stunt every year for the past decade, raising £150,000 in the process.
The plucky pensioner admitted that her family and friends think she is ‘absolutely bonkers’, but she enjoys her challenges because they bring much-needed support to those who need it most.
Trish Wagstaff, 85, from Appleton in Oxfordshire, has performed a charity stunt every year for the past decade, raising £150,000 in the process
Left, Mrs Wagstaff before her skydive and right, she abseils down down the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth
The grandmother-of-two spent most of her life as an army wife, but after her husband Peter died ten years ago, she decided to take a walk on the wild side.
She said: ‘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 I was.
‘I think you have got to have confidence in the people running these things. It’s no more dangerous than crossing the road when a car is coming.’
Mrs Wagstaff, a lifelong charity volunteer, said her pragmatic attitude in later life comes from decades spent moving from place to place with the British Army.
She said she would often live in ‘war zones’ with her husband, a major in the Scots Regiment, and children Sheena and Keith.
They lived in Germany, Malta, and Cyprus in 23 different homes.
Mrs Wagstaff, who had a hip replacement 15 years ago, said: ‘When you had a gun pointed at you, you knew the bullets were real.
‘I was an army wife, and as an army wife in dangerous places, you knew when danger was real.
Mrs Wagstaff (pictured, after a parachute jump) said her friends think she is ‘absolutely bonkers’ for taking part in her challenges
Among the stunts the grand-mother of two has completed includes a wing walk (pictured)
‘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.
‘We never knew where we were going to go next. It was a bit annoying – you’d get a garden going and then move on.
‘These are just trivial things.’
Mrs Wagstaff’s first stunt was swimming with sharks Blue Planet Aquarium at Ellesmere Port, Cheshire.
She has also abseiled 100m down the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, in 2010, where she found herself coaching a young couple who were scared.
‘If you are going to be a gibbering idiot you shouldn’t be doing it,’ she said.
‘When I did my abseil there were two young people who took fright and didn’t want to do it.
‘I said ‘if an old thing like me can do it, you two can.
Mrs Wagstaff said she enjoys her challenges because they bring much-needed support to those who need it most
”Just think of the pleasure you will have given to little children in a hospice when the sponsorship money buys special treats for dying children.”
She has whizzed along the longest zipwire in Europe, in Wales three years ago and last year she did a wing walk in Chiltern Air Park at Ipsden, Oxfordshire.
Her most recent stunt saw her perform a catapulted para-glide over the Westbury white horse in Salisbury earlier this month.
She managed to raise £20,680 for Alzheimers UK after spending three hours a day door-knocking around her village.
Mrs Wagstaff said: ‘I don’t mind heights, I enjoy them.
‘With the catapulted paraglide you’re attached to someone and then you run up the top of a hill and attach to a thermal wind.
Plucky Mrs Wagstaff stands strapped to the top of a biplane during her sponsored wing walk
‘That’s what lifts the parachute. You’re flying like a bird. The view was absolutely lovely.’
She has not yet planned her 10th anniversary stunt, which will be next year, but ruled out running a marathon.
‘I wouldn’t have the breath, not at nearly 86,’ Trish said. ‘I don’t think I’d be very good.’
‘I would encourage pensioners to stop saying ‘I’m old, I can’t do it’ and get up and do something.
‘An awful lot of people in their 70s have said to me ‘I can’t do it, I’m far too old.’
‘There are plenty of able bodied pensioners who don’t do a thing except for sit in front of the TV and get fatter and fatter and fatter.
‘Sadly it goes for all ages – some people just sit at a computer or in front of the box or texting on their mobile phones.’