A musician who is fully recovered from a sudden brain haemorrhage is embarking on a week-long trek in the Grand Canyon.

Freelance violinist Rachel Steadman, from Cumbria, suffered from a subarrachnoid haemorrhage while she was performing in 2004, aged 27.

It was a sudden and life-changing event and involved a long road to recovery.

Now, 12 years on, she is still being treated and realises the cost of ground-breaking research happening at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London.

Rachel has held a number of charity concerts for the hospital's charity, the National Brain Appeal, but wanted to do something different.

She also has polycystic kidney disease, which means she is more at risk of aneurysms growing, and could need a transplant in the next five years - another reason she feels now is the time for getting out of her comfort zone.

She decided to take up the challenge after she saw it advertised in a newsletter she gets from the National Brain Appeal.

"Something just clicked," said Rachel, 39.

"I thought that's a really brilliant way to use my life.

"It's one of the physical things I can do that I wouldn't have been able to do if things had gone differently."

She and a group of about 15 other ex-patients and retired doctors will make the trip across the Atlantic on October 8.

Once in the national park, they will set up the base camp they will trek from every day.

"I'm quite nervous but I'm really excited about it. I can't really quite believe I'm doing it," said Rachel.

Her Just Giving page has already reached about £1,500 - with at least two thirds of the money coming in when she posted a link on social media on February 8, the anniversary of her haemorrhage, when every year she has a party.

But Rachel is aiming to raise £3,000 for the cause that means so much to her.

"You meet so many people who are affected by it," she said.

"It's incredible. A lot of people have been really generous already and really supportive.

"Everybody who's been treated [at the hospital], that I've met, thinks it's a really special place and the follow up care I've had has been amazing."

Rachel now lives in London and often visits Cumbria to see her mum Myrtle, who lives in Upperby, Carlisle.

The former William Howard School pupil, who grew up at St Martin's Church vicarage in Brampton, has played violin and piano from a young age.

She was a member of Carlisle Youth Orchestra from the age of 10 and joined Cumbria County Youth Orchestra when she was 13.

She played for both until she left Cumbria to go to university in Essex, where she studied music.

Following that, in 1999, Rachel got into the The Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

She is performing at Loch Arthur Camphill Community concert in Dumfries on September 3 and half the proceeds will go to the National Brain Appeal.

To donate visit www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Rachel-Steadmansbrain .