GUTSY grandma Kathleen Walsh has completed a gruelling safari cycle in her 50th year -- and had to buy her first bike for the trip.

The accounts clerk, who has three children and a granddaughter, raised £2,800 for charity by taking part in 300-mile challenge last month.

She shocked family and friends when she came up with the idea because before the training started, she had only ever travelled on two wheels a couple of times during her life.

"There were nine of us signed up for the ride, me and eight men. It was even more daunting when we all met up on departure day and six of them were strapping young men aged between 18 and 23," she said. "They were a great bunch of lads and they took turns at cycling at the back with grandma."

The Downs Syndrome Association and Norwood Ravenswood, a charity which cares for deprived children, has benefited from the trip.

Kathleen, of Radfield Road, Darwen, added: "We were cycling 50 miles a day, a lot of the time on very demanding terrain.

"On some days were were cycling along rocky paths which made the track from Darwen Tower to Sunnyhurst look like a motorway.

"It wasn't all pain though. We saw some amazing sites, we had hippos grazing by our tents at nights, we saw zebra, giraffe, leopard, rhino, and one of the guys nearly had a heart attack when a lizard dropped out of the tree he was sitting under and ran down his arm.

"All along the route there were dusty villages of ramshackle wooden houses and Kenyan children with the biggest, widest, whitest smiles you have ever seen, despite the deprivation of their lives. Abiding memories which are a reward in themselves."

Kathleen has thanked family, friends, work colleagues and local businesses who supported her effort.