Inspired by her two-year-old nephew, Henry, an aunt has climbed over 5,364 metres (or 17,598 feet) above sea level to the base camp of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain.

Lucy Gowing, from Dunmow who works for Absolute Travel in Stansted has raised £1,800 and still counting for Grove Cottage, affiliated to Mencap in Bishop’s Stortford, which provides social and educational activities for people of all ages with a learning disability.

The facilities include a special needs nursery, Saturday and school holiday clubs, performing arts and a get active club as well as adult clubs and a speech and language therapy programme.

It costs over £400,000 per year to run Grove Cottage, all funded the local community. This is a latest charity fundraiser by Lucy, who in 2015 climbed Kilimanjaro raised £5,000 to help people with Downs Syndrome, like her little nephew.

The expedition to the Everest base camp took two weeks with the base camp reached on Monday, November 13.

Lucy, whose job is to arrange school trips, went with a group organised by Action Challenge, flying to Katmandu and taking a 15-seater plane from Lukla before starting the walk.

She said: “We were walking for seven or eight days, climbing up all the time. At first you don’t notice the altitude but then you start to find it difficult to breathe. There was a group of about 35 of us, we played cards and chatted every evening but it was so cold we went to sleep fairly early in our sleeping bags in the little huts, there was no heating and though it was sunny in the day, at night it was freezing. The loos were just holes in the ground. This isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But when you get home you really appreciate it and the scenery certainly was worth it.”

Rosie Wren from Grove Cottage said: “We are abolutely thrilled that Lucy took on this challenge for us. We can’t thank her enough.”

If anyone else would like to raise money for Grove Cottage, contact them on 01279 651908.

Lucy’s justgiving page for Grove Cottage is: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/lucy4grovecottage.