A BLACKBURN nurse is to walk the Great Wall of China having already raised £5,000 before she even leaves home!

Jayne McCraith, 43, of Billinge End Road, Blackburn, will join a delegation of women on a trek of the ancient monument in April in aid of Breast Cancer Care.

Jayne spends her days as a breast cancer nurse specialist supporting patients at Blackburn Royal Infirmary from diagnosis through to recovery.

She said she was doing the trek because Breast Cancer Care provide many of the leaflets and booklets that she hands out to patients and their families. She added: "I used to see information about the trek in the newsletters the charity send round.

"And when my friend was diagnosed last year, it prompted me to apply."

"I've never been to Asia and it's not somewhere I'm likely to go to again so I'm really excited about it."

During the nine-day expedition, the mother-of-two will walk through spectacular wooded valleys and rocky gorges, as well as spending as a quiet afternoon in Mongolia.

The group will walk for about six hours each day and about 70 miles in total.

After the trek, the group will spend a day sightseeing the Chinese capital Beijing, the host of the 2008 Olympics.

The charity requires participants to raise £2,500 to take part but Jayne has already raised £4,700 and is hoping to break the £5,000 barrier before the trek.

"I raised £2,000 by holding a series of breast cancer awareness sessions at home, I invited all the women I knew and even the ones that couldn't come sent me some money," she added.

She praised her husband David, 51, a partner at law firm Haworth and Nuttall, for using his contacts in the legal world to get sponsorship including £500 from his own firm.

Jayne has been walking ten hours a week since the new year to prepare for the challenge.

The Wall itself stretches 3,948 miles from the Shan-Hai Pass on the Bohai Sea in the east to Lop Nur in the west, which is in the autonomous region of Xinjiang Uygur and was built between 770 and 221 BC.

l To sponsor Jayne send cheques made out to Breast Cancer Care to Jayne McCraith, Breast Care Nurses, Level 3, Queen's Park Hospital, Blackburn.