When Culann Conroy was five years old, after reading a bedside story with his father Peter, he vowed to climb Africa’s highest mountain five years later.

“He said, ‘You’re allowed to climb Kilimanjaro when you’re ten and I’m going to climb Kilimanjaro when I’m ten’,” recalled Peter Conroy, a farmer from Kylemore in Connemara.

“I’m going, ‘of course you can’, five years was a million years sure. Then I forgot about it. He turned ten last year and said, ‘you promised, dad’.”

They fulfilled that promise in March when Culann (10) became the youngest Irish person to summit Kilimanjaro – beating by six months the record set in 2008 by Seán McSharry.

Culann, a primary school pupil in Menlo National School, his dad, and brother Aaron (13), a student at St Joseph’s Secondary School (The Bish) in the city, were among an expedition of eight who summited the Tanzanian peak on March 21.

As well as being the youngest Irish child to climb Kilimanjaro, the two brothers are believed to be the youngest siblings to achieve that feat together.

Caption: Top of the world….the Conroy brothers Culann (10) and Aaron (13) in Kilimanjaro.

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