Women vicars are following athletic as well as spiritual pursuits - by getting in the swim and climbing mountains.

While one has scaled Mount Kiliminjaro to raise money for her church, another has just celebrated her 40th birthday by swapping her dog collar for a bathing costume.

The Rev Sarah Sharp, swam ten miles in her local pool and has raised more than £1,000, again for a local church.

The marathon was at Lincoln Farm Park indoor pool at Standlake, which is just 12 metres long - about quarter the size of an Olympic pool.

"I had parishioners doing shifts to count the lengths," she said. "It was 12,500, interspersed with a break for lunch."

She is not the only have-a-go athletic female cleric in west Oxfordshire.

The Rev Sarah Jones, curate of Ramsden, Finstock, Leafield and Wilcote, took on the challenge of scaling Africa's highest peak, the 5,895 metre Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, despite confessing she was scared of mountains.

She went with her family but fell just 500 metres short of the summit after becoming a victim of altitude sickness.

Her adventure, in August, raised more than £1,000 in sponsorship for Leafield church and the Bethany Project which runs a children's home in Tanzania. Her husband Chris secured £5,000 for a school project in the East African country.