The legal executive usually spends her downtime on relaxing walks up hills and through meadows.

But Mount Kilimanjaro was a challenge with a difference. And she conquered it as the sun rose on Africa.



SHARP suited legal executive Pauline Coates loves nothing better than to get out the office and into the open air.

"That is where I can be alone and think. It's quite peaceful," said the avid walker who works at TBI Solicitors in Hartlepool.

She likes the great outdoors so much that she swapped her power suit for a snow suit to trek up one of the world's tallest mountains.

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Kilimanjaro is the world's largest freestanding mountain and world's third biggest summit overall.

It did not deter Pauline, 52, who was the oldest in her 22-strong mountaineering group.

She watched much younger and supposedly fitter group members drop out on a gruelling six day 19,340ft hike.

She said: "It was very hard work. The slope is gradual and that is why so many people can do it but the altitude knocks people back.

"In my group was a marathon runner who had to be taken down because she struggled to breathe and there was also a man who has done the three summits in the UK who also had to stop.

"Every day I was thinking 'I'm the oldest here. It must be only a matter of time before it catches me out'. But I never had a problem breathing.

"My main problem was that the altitude gave me excruciating headaches and my calves were throbbing uncontrollably – sometimes I was scared to stop because I thought I could never move."

Pauline, who was born in Hartlepool but now lives in Great Ayton, has experience of hill climbing.

She can often be found wandering in the Lake District and North Yorkshire Moors but admits Tanzania made all her UK efforts pale into significance.

And despite the pain she says reaching the summit for sunrise was worth every bit of blood, sweat and tears.

"It was the most beautiful and calm thing you could imagine," said Pauline.

"To think you are on top of the world is mind blowing. It was like New Year's Eve and I loved every second of it but I wish I could do it again because it was all over so fast. You can't stay there too long because the altitude will make you seriously ill."

She completed the challenge in October for the Butterwick Children's Hospice.

She raised £4,667 for the cause after funding the trip through raffles, race nights and £1,500 of her own money.

So what next for the outdoor adventurer?

"I would love to do the Himalayas. Maybe base camp of Mount Everest but it doesn't seem to have the same magic of reaching a summit."