PREVIEW

A man has recreated a scene from The Lion King – on the top of a Welsh mountain.

Steve Bancroft, 57, climbed the 1,955 feet (596 metre) Sugar Loaf, near Abergavenny, at dawn to place a realistic prop lion on its summit.

He explains: “I was inspired by some CGI footage I saw on the new Lion King movie. I thought it would be a great idea if we could recreate something similar, for 'real' on a local version of 'Pride Rock'.”

At 4.30am on 13th August, Steve and his friend Mark Taylor carried the 35Ib, life-sized statue on a trolley up most of the peak. “We had to carry it for the last couple of hundred metres as it had become too steep,” he says.

Steve had borrowed the fake predator from the Event Prop Shop he owns in Cwmbran.

He says: “We reached the summit at 5.55am in time for a glorious sunrise. After an hour we retreated back down the mountain to our van and took the lion back home to the shop.”

This is not the first high-level idea Steve has had. Last year, his 13-year-old son Tyler Bancroft helped him to place an eight-foot replica of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue on the 419m Twmbarlwm hill overlooking the Welsh town of Cwmbran.