Katie Piper hikes Yr Wyddfa with burns survivors

Model and campaigner Katie Piper has taken on highest peak in Wales with fellow burns survivors to raise money for charity.

The group hiked up Yr Wyddfa – also known as Snowdon – on Saturday for the Katie Piper Foundation.

Hiker Adele Bellis, who lost her right ear, half of her hair, and suffered extensive scarring from an acid attack, said the charity helped her create “a life I didn’t think I could ever have”.

So far the charity has raised £11,000 of its £15,000 target.

Piper, 40, from Andover in Hampshire, was left with serious injuries and permanent scarring after an acid attack in 2008.

She had hundreds of surgeries to repair damage to her face and eyesight following the attack on the orders of her ex-boyfriend.

Ex-boyfriend Daniel Lynch and Stefan Sylvestre, the man who threw the acid, were jailed for life in 2009.

Piper lost sight in one eye but doctors at the Queen Victoria Hospital, in East Grinstead, restored it.

She set up her foundation in 2010, and the charity is celebrating having helped 99 burns survivors, and provided residential rehab to 20.

“I think a burn injury is incredibly difficult to cope with, and it’s not the case of having treatment, you’re cured and everything’s OK, it’s physically very debilitating,” Piper said.

“Once you meet us, there’s no limit – you never have to leave us, we’re here for you forever.”

Yr Wyddfa was chosen because the variety of routes mean fundraisers of all abilities can take part, Piper said.

The hike is also a “bucket list moment” for her, because despite visiting family in Neath a lot, she has never done it.

Hiking with her is Ms Bellis, 32, from Suffolk, who was attacked with sulphuric acid in 2014, arranged by an ex-boyfriend.

Ms Bellis said: “I remember being in hospital, wishing he killed me instead, just because I couldn’t see a way forward.”

Anthony Riley, of Raglan Road, Lowestoft, was jailed for life. A friend he paid to attack her and two others were also jailed.

This year marked the 10-year anniversary of the attack.

Ms Bellis said she wanted to “celebrate just how far I’ve come” and to give back to the “amazing charity” without which “I don’t know where I’d be”.

She said the charity has done many things over the years for her, including organising counselling and a place at a French rehab centre.

“I accept who I am, if anything, my scars represent my freedom, my strength and the person I am now,” Ms Bellis said.

Fellow hiker Stuart Cooper woke up on fire in his flat in Cornwall in October 2019.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was December, he was in Morriston hospital in Swansea, and Covid meant everyone was wearing masks.

The father-of-four, 49, from Penzance said the accident “is still a mystery” because his flat was powered by electric, but a gas heater could have been the source.

Before Mr Cooper woke up from his coma, his eldest son was told “there was no hope”.

“I was in a coma for six weeks, the coma didn’t win,” he said. “Since waking up it’s been basically nothing but a mission to prove people wrong.”

He said the Katie Piper Foundation has been invaluable.