DAREDEVIL pensioner Dawn Goodson has successfully completed Bournemouth Pier’s daunting 820ft zipwire run.
The 83-year-old proved she had a head for heights by taking the charity challenge yesterday afternoon.
Dawn, who stepped off the 60ft tall launch tower at the end of the pier, carried out her high-speed ride over the sea to raise funds for the Motor Neurone Disease Association.
Before she completed her white-knuckle run, Mrs Goodson told the Daily Echo: “My husband, John, a military man who was doing 25 press-ups a day last year, was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in April. Now he can hardly swallow and he’s going to have to be fed through his stomach.
“It is a pretty nasty disease, but he says it’s better to be diagnosed at 84 than at 48. A lot of younger people get this disease.
“I saw a weather girl from the news do the zipwire and until then I’d been looking at that tower wondering what it was for.
“When I found out it was a zipwire I thought, OK I’ll do that for Motor Neurone Disease.”
Dawn, from Bournemouth, said she’d attracted quite a lot of sponsorship ahead of making her leap from the tower.
“The height doesn’t bother me at all – I’ve dived off the ten metre board at Weston-super-Mare and been at the top of a five-masted clipper.”
The attraction, the world’s first pier-to-shore zipwire, was launched in Bournemouth by Openwide International earlier this month.
The Daily Echo got the chance to ride it earlier this month. Watch a video of it here.
Operators say the ride marks the latest phase of a plan to revive the resort’s pier.
Visit mndassociation.org to make a donation.
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