"[Sion] Jair has heard the advice that you should test yourself mentally, do sudoku, crosswords and the like. But this doesn’t work for him."

"Not long ago, he tried to do a 'coffee time' crossword. He did it every day, in five minutes. But now he just stared blankly at the newspaper. 'Do you know, I couldn’t do two or three clues,' he says, shaking his head. 'So all that did was discourage me.' When he reads, Jair finds that he has forgotten the start of a sentence by the time he’s finished it. Nevertheless, as we wind our way up the Old Man [mountain], he has a precise recall of events that took place 50 years ago, even down to very specific details about the one-month Outward Bound course that first brought him to the Lake District. 'I had quite a good memory in the past,' he says. 'But that’s ironic, isn’t it? I can remember that my memory was good, but I can’t remember what about.' ... The future, when Jair thinks about it, can be a bit scary. He has no family, no companion (though he’d dearly like one); the one thing that’s always there for him is the Old Man of Coniston...."

From "Meet the man living with Alzheimer’s who climbs the same mountain every day/Sion Jair, 68, has climbed the Old Man of Coniston at least 5,000 times and the emerging science backs him up that regular, vigorous exercise is beneficial for those with the disease" (The Guardian).