Nine years old and already 900 peaks under his belt, it’s an achievement that has earned Frankie McMillan global praise.
‘Frankie has done a lot of fundraising in his time and, because of his friend, he wanted to do something for a heart charity. So, we started looking into it and found CRY – Cardiac Risk in the Young – and the Aaron Dixon Memorial Fund, which provides heart screening in Cumbria.
‘Now, we are planning to mark Frankie’s 10th birthday by raising £50,000 by climbing the 10 highest mountains in the Balkans: Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania and Kosovo.’
Frankie and Basia aim to complete all 10 summits in just six weeks during the summer holidays this year. In years to come, he hopes to become the youngest person to climb Mount Everest and the next seven highest summits in the world.
The money he raises will go into a Frankie McMillan Fund within CRY that will be ringfenced and allocated for west Cumbria heart screenings like The Aaron Dixon Memorial Fund, founded by Aaron’s mother, Debbie. Aaron was born in Kendal in 1987, but tragically, he died in 2011 from an undiagnosed genetic heart condition.
Money donated via Frankie’s fundraising link will go directly to the Frankie McMillan Fund and some will also go to CRY’s core funding and support the charity nationally as well.
Basia adds: ‘It gives me goosebumps just thinking that, in a few months, we will be standing in front of Drigg Hall watching 100 young people queuing for heart screening and we’ll be able to say, “we did this”. It would be the proudest moment for us both.’