A Birmingham teacher spent her 50th birthday morris dancing in the Peruvian Andes at 7,546 ft to raise money for for charity.

Ruth Dillon, a special needs primary school teacher, performed the traditional dance at the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu to raise money for the aid organisation ActionAid.

Ahead of her trip, Ms Dillon received support from her local morris dancing club and her school, Wyndcliffe Primary, in Birmingham. She organised catering, raffles and quizzes for morris dancing events, and also raised money through direct sponsorship from members of her club.

She said: "I had been sponsoring a child with ActionAid for 15 years when I saw the chance to do this fund-raising trek. It came at a perfect time because it fell on my 50th birthday, just at a time when I wanted to prove I wasn't too old for doing something challenging and different."

At the end of the trip, Ms Dillon handed her morris dancing club T-shirt to the porter who had carried her camping equipment and food up the steep climb.

She said: "The porters were brilliant. Their menus were so imaginative and they ran past us on the climb to get ready each day for when we arrived at the campsite. I had to give them something, so now somewhere in Maccu Picchu there is a Peruvian man wandering about in a Glorishears of Brummagemmorris dancing shirt puzzling a lot of tourists."

Despite her energetic hobby, Ms Dillon was worried about her fitness for the climb.

She said: "I did panic at first and was concerned about the altitude, but in fact the Inca Trail was brilliant."

As well as completing the Inca Trail, Ms Dillon and her group visited an ActionAid project in Sochimarca, a mountain top village.

Ms Dillon raised more than £2,800 for ActionAid.