The 27-year-old secretary of the Rotary Club of Doncaster St Leger has returned after driving through desert and mountains to Sierra Leone, to deliver all-terrain vehicles to charity workers.

And, after returning back to creature comforts ranging from fish and chips to her own bed, Chrissy admits there were scary moments during the 5,100 mile, three week journey.

Back home after dropping off the four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi L200, she said: "I was so tired, and I didn't really expect it to be that tiring, but we were always hungry.

"Once we got past Morocco we didn't have time to stop for meals - we would just stop for 15 minutes and eat bread and water, because that was all we were able to buy on the route.

"We'd expected we would be able to stop at a store or a small restaurant. We were travelling 15 hours a day and, by the time we stopped, we were tired and hungry."

Chrissy's route rook her from Doncaster to Hull, from where she took a boat to Rotterdam.

She ventured through Europe via the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain, then crossed the Mediterranean, before getting back on the road in Morocco, through Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia and Guinea, to Sierra Leone.

Her team carried jerry cans of fuel in the cars and filled up the cans and the fuel tanks when they found petrol stations, using Euros to pay at whatever exchange rate they could haggle.

She and the other 23 members of the convoy of five vehicles camped next to the road and in clearings among the trees and bushes overnight.

But it was the experience of driving through heavily potholed roads on a mountainside which caused the most concern for her.

She said: "As a driver, the scariest part was travelling through Senegal to Sierra Leone. The roads were horrible.

"We were travelling at 2am, and the pot holes were really deep. You didn't have the choice to drive around them as it was either pass through them or fall down a mountainside. I was driving through them at about 5mph."

Despite the stresses and fears over the three weeks, there was still plenty of happiness during the trek.

And nothing could compare with arriving to deliver the vehicles and the reception the group received from the children. Chrissy said when they arrived, seeing the children praying, singing and dancing made the whole trip worth while.

"The night sky was beautiful," she said. "They say there are more stars than grains of sands and it looked true. Even the moon looked different.''

They took vehicles to help charity workers aid boys and girls who were victims of child trafficking during Sierra Leone's civil war.

Children as young as eight were taken to fight as rebels, others as child brides.