Tales of adventurous women

It was in Mr. Croft’s class, when I was nine years old, that we had to work on what he termed our ‘Topic Book’ project. Each child had to create every part of their book, from cutting the pages and designing the cover, to stitching the spine. At the same time, in a class called ‘Finding Out’, we had to work alone to research and write about our topic. I’d been bold with my title - ‘Adventurous Women’ - each week discovering more about women who had broken through barriers to achieve the extraordinary. My book included Amy Johnson, Amelia Earhart, Marie Curie, and Florence Nightingale. Yes, my illustrations left something to be desired, but I loved every minute of working on that project, which sparked a lifelong interest in the lives of women who had gone to the edge of experience in exploration. As time passed, I soaked up autobiographies of earlier adventurers - Gertrude Bell, Isabella Bird, Freya Stark, and Beryl Markham - and by my twenties I was enthralled by the exploits of women such as Naomi James - the New Zealander I’d met while working on publicity for the UK launch of her book, . James was the first woman to complete a single-handed voyage around the world via Cape Horn. I read about Robyn Davidson’s journey across Australia in , and I felt my skin crawl, as I imagined blankets of humidity and strange insects brushing up against me. But to mark the anniversary of , I wanted to find out more about what drives women to face the elements alone in some of the world’s most inhospitable and challenging environments. I was curious about what those women felt when they looked down from on high, or across a glacial waste; how they managed emotions with fire bearing down upon them, or a twenty-foot wave crashing into the small craft carrying them across an ocean. I wanted to know what happens when curiosity spurs a deep desire to meet Earth’s elements head on - and the subsequent effect of that journey. I wanted to go to ‘Finding Out’ class all over again.