A remarkable young mountaineer has managed to scale the equivalent height of Mount Everest EIGHT times - before his ninth birthday.

Intrepid Charlie Batham, 8, has climbed more than 232,260ft (70,792m) after summiting over 200 different peaks in just under four years across the UK.

And his love of climbing started when he was enjoying a family holiday near Holyhead.

He said: “I love doing it to explore and tick the peaks off, and I love seeing the different animals and wildlife that we wouldn’t find at home.”

The real-life “mountain goat” caught the bug for adventure when he turned five and asked his parents if he could reach a summit to celebrate his big day.

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He has since conquered Britain’s tallest peaks - including Scafell Pike (3,210ft) in the Lake District, Yr Wyddfa/Snowdown, 3,560ft) in North Wales, and Ben Nevis (4,413ft) in the Scottish Grampians.

Charlie bagged his eighth ‘Everest’ just over a week ago on Chrome Hill, in the Peak District, with his father Paul Batham, 54, who logs the heights he's climbed.

But the proud dad thinks he's actually covered far more ground than he's recorded after he gave up documenting mountains they’d climbed more than once.

Paul said: “If there’s anything to climb, he’ll climb it regardless of whether it’s 200ft or 2000ft – he’s like a mountain goat.

"At five years old we couldn't stop him and even now, he’s the same. Sometimes if we’re going anywhere he’ll lead me, and I’ll have to follow him up the routes now.

“We go up to the Peak District and Yorkshire Dales pretty much every weekend, and he just climbs and climbs, so I don’t even put all of them down any more.

"In reality, he may have climbed up to 100,000m (328,084ft). So far he’s definitely done eight Everests, but he may have done nine or ten in reality.”

The primary school pupil, who lives with his dad and mum Donna, 53, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, has now travelled hundreds of miles in search of new mountains.

But Paul said his zest for the great outdoors began when he asked to scale a peak for his fifth birthday - adding he’d never looked back after reaching his first pinnacle.

He said: “We were on holiday on Anglesey on his birthday, and we asked him if there was anything he wanted to do to celebrate it. He just said he’d like to climb a mountain.

“We thought we’d give it a go – and he raced up Holyhead Mountain and loved it. Then he asked ‘Can I do some more?’ So it just started from there.

“Later, me and my wife did a fundraiser for his school to see if he could do all Yorkshire’s Three Peaks and England’s highest mountain, Scafell Pike, before he turned five and a half.

“He raced up all of them and did it in five years and three months.”

Childminder Paul said Charlie had never asked to go home during a hike, with the pair only forced to cut short their trips due to bad weather on three occasions.

But he said his toughest challenge was reaching the top of the UK’s tallest mountain, Ben Nevis, sitting 4,411ft (1345m) above sea level on the West Coast of Scotland.

He said: “That was probably the hardest one in terms of determination and endurance for him. It’s ten miles, but it's five miles up and five miles down. It was a very hard climb.”

“Scafell Pike was also hard because the weather was absolutely atrocious. We got halfway, and there were a lot of people turning around. But we said ‘Let’s give it a go’.

“There was a really heavy stream. I had to throw Charlie over my shoulder and carry him. It was between my knees and waist. Then the bad weather, the mist and the rain came in.

“There were some tears but he wouldn’t give up, and we did get to the top of both with him.”

Thrilled Paul has now turned the attic in his house into a room that commemorates all Charlie's summit cresting achievements.

And he said the pair still spend nearly every weekend in the fells and hills - camping in the back of her estate car before rising at 4 am to get in a good day’s climb.

He said: “I’ll throw his mattress in the back of the estate car, we’ll drive up Friday and we’ll sleep on the moors in the back of the car.

“If we can get up early enough, we might do a climb on Friday evening. But we’ll normally get up at 4am or 5am to do as much as we can.

“He absolutely loves it. He thinks sleeping in the back of the car is the best weekend ever.

“You could give him a party or a weekend away, but if I told him that alternative was going climbing and sleeping in the back of the car for the night on the moors, he’d take that every time.”