EXCITEMENT peaked for Buriton pupils as veteran Everest mountaineer Mike Truman paid them a visit.

The year 4 and 5 children showed off their knowledge to the adventurer who gave a talk on his intrepid exploits and signed autographs.

Mountains has been their topic this term, and they have been learning about their geology, geography, meteorology and more.

And Mike was impressed by how much they knew, even the height of Everest, to the meter.

“It is 8,848 metres high,” Harry (9), announced.

“The visit was really fun and really, really interesting. I would like to climb a mountain one day.”

Mike, who has made numerous expeditions to the Himalayas and the iconic peak, the highest mountain in the world, was in his element to be inspiring the children to accept challenges through their life.

Mike, who is a friend of one of the parents of the village school, said: “I?love talking to children. They are so interested because they have it all to come still.

“I?was very impressed by their research and they asked me some interesting questions.

“They asked me if I ever wanted to give up and if I had been frightened. I told them of course I had been, that was all part of the process.

“They were surprised to know that coming down could be the most dangerous part.”

Class teacher Emily Holloway said it had been a “brilliant” visit for the children.

Mike, a former British Army Gurkha officer, believes in the power of mountaineering to transform lives.

He regularly took his own children on mountain hikes and saw what a positive effect it had on them.

He founded a Midhurst-based company ten years ago, True Adventure, to take young people and others on expeditions.

Over the decade thousands of schoolchildren have been taken out to mountains and experienced personal development because of that, said Mike.

He has also written a memoir about his remarkable mountaineering life –The Storm: Adventure and Tragedy on Everest – which chronicles the incredible highs and the desperate lows.

He gives his own perspective on the 1996 Everest storm, as well as the fateful day in 1999 when Briton Mike Matthews disappeared high on Everest after he and Mike had reached the summit.