A 62-year-old county councillor is to make a bid to climb Everest - a feat that would make him the oldest Briton to have reached the summit.

Roy Tudor Hughes, Oxfordshire county councillor for Dorchester-on-Thames, flies to the Himalayas for the record-breaking attempt on March 30.

If successful, he will be the oldest Briton by seven years to climb Everest and the second oldest in the world.

Roy Tudor Hughes

A 63-year-old Japanese climber, Toshio Yamamoto, reached the summit last year, dashing his chances of becoming the world's oldest.

Mr Tudor Hughes will join an international team of climbers led by New Zealander Russell Brice, and will spend several weeks acclimatising before pushing for the summit in late May.

The team includes French extreme boarder Marco Siffredi, who intends to be the first to snowboard from the top, Evelyne Binsack, who hopes to be the first Swiss woman up Everest, and Guatemalan Jaime Vanals, who needs only Everest to have conquered the highest peaks on all seven continents.

Mr Tudor Hughes took up mountaineering at the age of 50, after graduating from high-altitude skiing.

His first climb was Mont Blanc in the French Alps, with the help of his friend and renowned mountain guide Fred Harper.

In 1998, aged 60, he successfully climbed the Himalayan peak Cho Oyu - the sixth highest mountain in the world.

Fred Harper has since died of cancer and Mr Tudor Hughes plans to use his Everest bid to raise money for the Fred Harper Memorial Trust.

He said: "I thought it was appropriate. The Trust gives financial assistance to young British men and women undergoing arduous and expensive Mountain Guiding apprenticeships."

After meeting the other climbers in Kathmandu, he will fly to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, before trekking to Everest base camp with the heavy provisions needed to set up a series of high-altitude camps.

Eight climbers and four climbing Sherpas hope to reach the summit via the North Col and North East Ridge Route before the Monsoon snowfall arrives in June.

The chosen route is considered to be technically more difficult than the South-East Ridge route pioneered by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing in 1953.

It gets battered by fiercer winds, and is attempted by only ten per cent of Everest climbers.

Mr Tudor Hughes said: "Much depends on the weather conditions and how you're feeling. But we hope to be at the summit towards the end of May."

To get fit, he has been training at gyms in Wallingford and Sandford.

He said: "I wouldn't say I have led a particularly athletic life. But since I decided to do this climb last November, I've been training hard.

"I'm the fittest I've been for a long time." He added: "I will be using oxygen above an altitude of 7,000m."

The main base camp will have email, and a satellite phone. Progress reports will be posted on the expedition's website address: www.himex.com

Mr Tudor Hughes's Dorchester division includes the parishes of Berinsfield, Warborough and Shillingford, Clifton Hampden, Culham, the Baldons, Nuneham Courtenay, and Drayton St Leonard.

Colleagues will cover for him while he is away.