TWO businesswomen have raised more than £12,000 for charity after climbing to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Charlotte Jones, 24, and Harriet Spalding, 29, recently completed their seven-day mammoth charity challenge, which involved trekking 6,000m up Africa’s highest peak.

Harriet raised £5,500 for the Middlesbrough and Teesside Philanthropic Foundation, while Charlotte, better known as Charlie, raised more than £6,500 for The Aplastic Anaemia Trust.

The two women have been friends since school.

Charlie is a member of the Jones family, owners of Armstrong Richardson in Stokesley.

For her, the challenge was a way to honour her much-loved late grandfather and former chief executive of Armstrong Richardson, Brian Jones, whose life was cut short due to Aplastic Anaemia.

She said: “We trekked through the night to reach Uhuru Peak, which is the highest point, and we made it to the top just as the sun was just starting to rise which made it a very emotional moment, it’s a memory that will stay with me forever and I can honestly say it was the best week of my life.”

Harriet’s family own property company The Mandale Group and are patrons of the Teesside-based Philanthropic Foundation, a charity which sees leading companies and individuals work together to make the area a better place to live and work.

Harriet said: “Our friends and families really got behind what we were doing and it’s thanks to them that we’ve been able to raise as much as we have.”

The Aplastic Anaemia Trust is Armstrong Richardson’s chosen charity for 2017 and later this year a team from the company will take part in the National Three Peaks Challenge, climbing the highest mountains of England, Scotland and Wales within 24 hours. Any donations raised for the charity will be matched pound for pound by the company.