A FIVE day trek in the Himalayas has been completed by a Darwen teaching assistant.

Cheryl Shaw, 36, of Whitehall raised over £2,800 trekking for five days from Ladakh (also known as Little Tibet) in India through the mountains for charity Scope, which assists people with cerebral palsy.

Cheryl, who works at the St Thomas' Pupil Referral Unit in Blackburn, said: "I chose this charity as I work with young people and have dealt with families caring for children with this condition.

"As a mother I empathised with the difficulties these children and their families faced on a day to day basis.

"It was a charity that appealed to me because I hadn't really heard of many people doing fundraising for them.

"My brother climbed Mount Blanc in The Alps last year when raising money for cancer research and I wanted to do my bit for a good cause."

The longest day consisted of 12 hours trekking and in total the group of 26 people on the trek from all over the UK raised over £75,000.

Cheryl was taken aback by the sights she saw when reaching the mountain peaks.

"It was absolutely fantastic, the highest summit we reached was 4,100 metres high and we could see snow-topped mountains for miles ahead," she said.

"I camped out at night and met some amazing people when walking through the local villages we even visited a Buddhist monastery and Nunary and made a donation to a school who were without sufficient pens and paper."

Cheryl, who is planning to attempt the Great wall of China next year, paid special thanks to friend Mark McKeown from Darwen as without his generosity she would never had been able to make the trip. Mr McKeown kindly offered to drive Cheryl down to London for her long-haul flight after she had missed her plane from Manchester to Heathrow.

She said: "A big thank you to all the pupils and staff from St Thomas's pupil referral unit Blackburn and all my family and friends for their support."