A 17-YEAR-OLD Winsford girl hoping to spend time volunteering in South America has completed a mammoth challenge in a bid to fund her trip.

Kate Ellis, from Marton, last week completed a gruelling 135-mile walk around Anglesey as part of a fundraising effort to fund her ‘Camps International’ Ecuador trip in summer 2019.

Kate was joined by her dad and dog for the walk, which took eight days despite the best efforts of the notorious Welsh weather.

The trip will see Kate – a Tarporley High School student – provide volunteering support in a village, helping to build and paint a school as well as planting trees in the rainforest and working at a turtle sanctuary.

She must raise £4,000 ahead of the trip, and her muddy trek along with regular bake sales has helped her past one quarter of the total.

As well as being joined by her dad Carl and dog Bert for the duration of the trip, other – including friend Libby – joined in for sections.

She said: “We go to Anglesey quite a lot and I thought it would be a really good challenge.

“It was very tiring. There were 12 stages which were meant to take 12 days, but we managed to do it in eight.

“We were walking from anywhere between six and nine hours – depending on how many hills there were.

“It was tough just generally, just trying to keep going through it all. It was really tiring, and because there was that much rain we were going through flooded fields.

“The estuaries had burst their banks, so some of the bridges we were using didn’t actually go all the way across and we ended up walking in the river.”

Along the way, Kate and co saw seals, lambs being born in a field, a lifeboat launch at Beaumaris, and a coastguard helicopter deployed at Holyhead.

In total, they walked 137 miles, starting and ending at Moelfre via the Anglesey Coastal Path.

n You can follow the fundraiser online at justgiving.com/crowdfund ing/kate-ellis