Flames for Paralympic Games lit as countdown begins

The official countdown to the Paralympics in London started on Wednesday with the lighting of the Paralympic flame on top of four of the highest mountains in Britain.

Groups of scouts and mountaineers, accompanied by people with disabilities, scaled the tallest peaks in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland — the four regions of the United Kingdom.

Sebastian Coe, the chief organiser of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, joined the trek that took the flame to the top of Mount Snowdon, the highest mountain in the region of Wales.

“It was a great team effort and a long trek. It was quite cold in a couple of places,” he said.

The perforated cone-shaped torches, protected from the elements by being placed in miners’ lanterns, will be united in a ceremony later this week.

They will then be carried to the town of Stoke Mandeville, in the county of Buckinghamshire, where the Paralympic movement was founded in 1948.

From there, they will be carried in a 24-hour relay to the Olympic stadium in Stratford, east London, for the opening ceremony for the Paralympic Games on August 29.