THE mum of murdered south Essex woman Grace Millane has spoken about the memories and legacy of her daughter after completing a tribute trek to the top of Africa's highest mountain.

Gillian Millane raised more than £30,000 by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, where she also placed two memorial stones in memory of Grace and her husband Dave, who died from cancer in 2020.

Grace Millane, 22, was killed on a Tinder date in Auckland in December 2018. It took two years for her murderer to be brought to justice and jailed.

The Millane family, now based in Wickford, have many connections with Thurrock, where Grace's grandad was a former mayor and the borough is where the family building business began.

Gillian completed her climb in Africa earlier this month and recently appeared on TV to talk about the experience.

She said leaving the stone meant that her daughter, who loved to travel and 'obviously that was cut very short', was 'still travelling around the world'.

Some of the money raised from the climb will go towards a charity working to end men's violence against women, called The White Ribbon campaign.

"Grace and David would have been extremely proud, but they would also have made a joke out of saying mum's definitely going through this mid-life crisis. But they would have been proud, definitely," said Gillian.

"Life hasn't been that particularly kind to me in the last four years, that's for sure, for any of my family. But we're all right. We'll get to where we need to be or wherever we think that place is," she added.

"I always said wherever I go I will put a stone down with her name on it, so in some way she was still travelling around the world and if someone came along and picked it up, she'd go somewhere else.

"So for me to put the pebbles up there with their names on it, that was a really, really big thing."

Mrs Millane trained for months for the challenge, which she said was "one of the toughest physical things" she had ever done and "very, very emotional".

In a post on the Facebook page of the charity created to remember Grace, (Love Grace X) Gillian added: "I'd just like to thank everyone that's given us money for charity.

"We've done it, it really, really wasn't easy. I can't thank everyone enough for the support they've given us."