A nomadic grandma has converted a £100k Land Rover into an off-road motorhome as part of a "mammoth" charity fundraising trip through Africa.

Kat Smith, from New Ash Green, has been working on the iconic British brand for more than 30 years.

The 55-year-old mechanic comes from Kent but also has a property in Spain and splits her time between the two.

In her downtime she has managed to customise and convert her four-wheel Defender to include a gas hob, fridge freezer and even a shower inside.

It's the first of its kind Kat believes and she now intends to take it on a "mammoth" roadtrip through Africa, stopping off to volunteer at an orphanage in Uganda along the way.

Explaining the inspiration behind the trip, Kat told KentOnline: "I've done trips before, 11 years ago I rode a quad bike to Timbuktu after my grandma died and it became a sort of memorial for her and also a big charity event for Macmillan.

"But it's always grated on me a bit that the money we raised went into Europe.

"We went there and we planted trees in Africa which then grew and hopefully the fruit from them would feed the locals but that was the only part of it that we did for Africa.

"So in view of that I always intended to do something for Africa itself, and that's when I decided while planning a trip to South Africa that I would go out of my way to start looking at orphanages and I found an unsponsored orphanage called the Little Angels in Uganda."

The orphanage does not have cooking facilities and food is cooked on an open fire on the floor.

It caters to seven or eight children per bunk bed, which are just slats of wood without mattresses.

The children do not have any pens or paper, and the school is "just rubble with a blackboard", she says.

Kat added: "It really drew on my heart strings to be honest, and having spent many of my younger years fostering children and working with young offenders, this was something on a scale I'd never seen.

"So I made it my point to find out how bad it really was, and to put it out there and I thought 'I'd love to volunteer with them' which I'm going to do.

"I'm a mechanic by trade, I've lived backwards and forwards from Spain for many years, I do building and welding, and I'm a qualified teacher so I thought there's got to be something I can do down there, even if it's digging holes."

The Land Rover took Kat around seven months to a year to finish, although she only worked on it in evenings and at weekends.

It has a pop-up tent on the top which pivots on one end, giving her a double bed.

There is also a double bed at the bottom, as well a shower, a kitchen area, gas, fridge, freezer and a storage area.

The mechanic said: "Something that was important for us was a shower, and it's never been done before in a land rover, no one has ever been able to achieve putting a hot and cold running water shower in one.

"I made it my mission, I ripped it apart, welded, cut, shut and made it happen so the land rover really is designed around our needs which is really important as overlanders."

Kat will be travelling to the orphanage with her friend Nicole Taylor, 60, and they are planning to leave on February 6.

"I intend to be away for six to nine months, depending on how long the visa allows me to stay," she said.

If the Ethiopia border is open, the pair will return to the UK where the Land Rover will be shipped to Egypt.

Then they will fly over to meet the off-road vehicle in Egypt before carrying on down to the orphanage in Uganda and finishing their trip in Cape Town, South Africa.

If this is not possible, they will still leave on the same day but will instead cross over into Morocco via Spain and drive down the east African coast.

They hope to cover more than 20,000km and visit at least 16 countries along the way.

"Most of the trip is going to be on tracks, mountains, rivers, and deserts in the middle of nowhere," Kat added. "The planning is immense but it is what it is."

The grandmother is holding a charity event in Spain on February 4 and has set up a Gofundme to raise money for the orphanage.

She said: "I will be taking pens, pencils and sanitary products for girls – I haven't got a huge amount of space because we're travelling overland in a Land Rover, we can't tow trailers.

"So what we're going to do is we will take a loaded card with all the funds raised.

"When I thought about it would make more sense to buy food and supplies in Africa, so that it is also helping the local community."

The Kent-based expat was recently diagnosed with diabetes which she said "broke her world".

However, the qualified teacher decided that it wasn't going to get in the way of the trip and her passion for adventure.

She said: "There's thousands of people that are walking around with this disease thinking that it's the end of their world, it really isn't and I'm going to prove that it isn't."

"Hopefully this is an inspiration to the diabetic world because it is horrible to live with and it's life changing.

"I can't change the world but between us we can make a difference, and all you have to do is care, it's as simple as that."