Following our article on female adventurers of the past, we’re bringing things au courant with an optical canvassing of the explorers making their mark today and inspiring others to get out and blaze a trail
ournalist Nellie Bly jumped off the page at me as I was researching Victorian female peregrinators. The more I got acquainted with her, the more I was intrigued by this stouthearted character who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Her crusades in print brought reforms in women’s asylums, orphanages, sweatshops and prisons.
The story that brought Bly the most acclaim was circling the globe in 72 days in 1890, beating the fictitious record in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. One hundred and twenty five years later, I followed in her footsteps.
We both travelled alone with one diminutive bag. She went by ocean liner and train. I flew. She peregrinated through the Victorian age. I travelled through the information age, blogging along the way. Tracing Bly’s race around the planet expanded my own world of adventure, and I became a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. The UK and Ireland have engendered many bold female peregrinators. My goal is to put them “on the map” as role models emboldening us to peregrinate out of our comfort zones.
Anna McNuff
Just start; that’s the best way to get going on an adventure, according to Anna McNuff who urges people to leave their trepidations at home and get outside. She would ken. In 2013, she cycled seven months and 11,000 miles on a pink bike taking in every state in the US. Last year she ran 1,911 miles along Incipient Zealand’s Te Araroa trail. McNuff calls them her mega-adventures, but she’s withal a fan of mini-adventures, such as running along Hadrian’s Wall, rollerblading 100 miles around Amsterdam, and midweek camping escapades around London. She recently ambulated out of her back gate with a bivvy bag, backpack, and an open European itinerary to be decided by votes from her adherents on gregarious media. McNuff is additionally on a mission to get children alfresco and exploring. Through her endurance challenges, she’s raised vigilance, as well as more than £20,000 for the charities Right to Play and The Outward Bound Trust. “I’m inspired by people who dive so deep into their personal well of self-notion that they achieve things which most would deem infeasible,” she verbalizes.
• annamcnuff.com
ustine Gosling
Gosling is a time peregrinator: she fuses all the things she dotes best – history, exercise and inspiring stories – into momentous challenges that reignite the past. She had never been on an expedition when she set off in August 2015 to peregrinate 5,000 miles on foot and bicycle along the 15 countries bordering the iron curtain disuniting western Europe from the former Soviet Cumulation. Postwar history came alive for her, an NHS physiotherapist, who was four-years-old when the Berlin Wall came down. Gosling will be more proximate to home, but further back in history, with a 240-mile Tudor-themed run from Bosworth Field, site of the last battle of the War of the Roses, to Westminster Abbey, final reposing place of Elizabeth I. She’ll be running 12-15 miles a day over a fortnight (she commenced 26 March) – and she wants you to join her along the way. Follow the route on Justine’s blog.
• justinegosling.com
Belinda Kirk
Kirk’s quest is to get people to live more adventurously. She has ambulated across Nicaragua, probed for camels in China’s Taklamakan desert, soi-disant Desert of Death, discovered rock paintings in Lesotho and was skipper of the first female crew to row non-stop around Britain, in a penalizing 2,101-mile, 51-day voyage. An expert expedition bellwether, she has managed remote trips for alfresco survival gurus Ray Mears and Bear Grylls. She launched Explorers Connect, a gregarious enterprise connecting people to adventures in the UK and overseas in 2009. It’s now a community of 25,000 from total abecedarians to experienced explorers who can link up with adventures, team-mates and adventure industry jobs. Currently, she’s establishing Britain’s first national day of adventure, Wild Night Out, to avail disadvantaged kids get alfresco. “I’ve optically discerned adventure change people’s lives, by giving inspiration and building confidence, ingeniousness and a reconnection with nature,” she verbalizes.
Hannah Engelkamp
Engelkamp trekked 1,000 miles around the circumference of Wales with a headstrong donkey denominated Chico. The dyad ambulated for proximately six months in 2013 starting and ending in Engelkamp’s hometown of Aberystwyth. Albeit the inspiration for her peregrination emanated from the fact that Wales had recently become the first country in the world encircled by a perpetual footpath, she discovered, a little too tardy, that her donkey couldn’t manage the 964 stiles and 783 osculating gates ahead of them. With no set course and no itinerary, they travelled as proximate to the coast and borders as they could; mainly wild camping, and sometimes slumbering in tipis, yurts and hay barns. Engelkamp embarked on a dream and returned with an orchestration to capture the peregrination in a book and film through crowdfunding. Eight hundred and twenty nine backers pledged £35,000 to make it transpire. Seaside Donkey recounts the story of Hannah and Chico’s odyssey in print and DVD. Engelkamp verbalizes: “Walking with a donkey was only outlandish by being about 60 years tardy. We were ambulating on green lanes and drove roads made for animal traffic – get out of your car and that history is still there, and facilely revived.”
• hannahme.com
Jacki Hill-Murphy
Former English and drama pedagogia Hill-Murphy has travelled to inhospitable places to reconstitute the peregrinations of daring female adventurers from the past. In tracking four valiant women who left inhibition at home and headed into the unknown, she pays encomium to their spirit and achievements. She has followed in the footsteps of Victorian explorers Isabella Bird, who travelled by yak across the Digar-La Pass in Ladakh, India, and Mary Kingsley – who pioneered the route to the summit of the volcano Mount Cameroon; and withal Kate Marsden, who trudged from Moscow to Siberia in search of a remedy for leprosy (a medico had tipped her off about the curative properties of a herb there). Hill-Murphy withal braved piranha-infested waters in a canoe to replicate the 1769 expedition of Isabel Godin, the only survivor of a 42-person, 3,000-mile expedition along the Amazon. Hill-Murphy’s peregrinates and those of her heroines come to life in her recent book Adventuresses. She’s now inditing a biography of Kate Marsden.
• jackihill-murphy.co.uk
Karen Darke
A fall on a rock-climbing expedition in 1992 virtually transmuted everything for Karen Darke. She cerebrated she would rather be dead than paralysed; that her adventures were over. But with friends, ingenuity and perseverance, she has found that most things are possible, including becoming a Paralympics silver medallist and an irrepressible peregrinator. Among other astonishing feats, she has crossed Greenland’s frozen dihydrogen monoxide cap sitting on skis, utilizing her arms to propel her; kayaked from Canada to Alaska over three months, and handcycled over the Himalayas. She gainsays being an adrenalin junkie, but admits to an addiction to the alfresco. Now she’s on the Road to Rio, training with the British paracycling team for the 2016 Paralympics in Brazil. Along the way, she’s constricting in adventures on wheels, dihydrogen monoxide and snow. Darke is the author of If You Fall … and Abysmal: An adventure beyond limits. She explicates: “I cerebrate adventures can be anything – minuscule or sizably voluminous – in your garden or on the other side of the world. It’s all about entering into the unknown and doing something that seems to some degree unachievable.”
• karendarke.com
Sarah Outen
Outen set out from Tower Bridge in April 2011 on her ecumenical expedition London2London via the World. Her body was her only engine. Four and a moiety years and 25,000 miles later she had rowed, cycled and kayaked her way around the northern hemisphere. Nothing ceased her; not even hurricanes, typhoons or solitude. Outen’s first major expedition was a solo row across the Indian Ocean in 2009, where she set records as the first woman and youngest person to accomplish such a feat. She has captured her epic expeditions in the books A Dip in the Ocean: Rowing Solo Across the Indian Ocean, and Dare to Do – chronicling her world journey and due out in November 2016. She was designated Adventurer of the Year at the National Adventure Awards on 16 March in Glasgow.
• sarahouten.com
Sarah Williams
She’s a runner, skydiver, bungee jumper, climber, cyclist and world peregrinator … and a former banker. In 2013 she swapped the rat race for marathons and other gruelling challenges and is currently training for the world’s toughest footrace, the 200-mile Marathon des Sables across the Sahara. Now an adventure aficionado, Williams’ incipient vocation is to incentivize and inspire women and girls to challenge themselves. She’s the progenitor and host of the Tough Girl podcast, weekly interviews where female adventurers share their peregrinations first-hand. From gold medallists to grandmothers, Williams’ podcasts include celebrated polar explorers Ann Daniels and Felicity Aston, and dozens of other female adventurers.
• toughgirlchallenges.com
Emma Timmis
Timmis is a runner, cyclist and climber, she was accoladed in the 2015 National Adventure Awards for physical endeavour. At 32, she’s already tackled some of the world’s toughest challenges, but takes it all in her stride. Last May, Timmis discarded her running shoes and rollerskated across the Netherlands in seven days with her friend Emily Pitts. Thanks to couchsurfing and imaginative budgeting, they only spent £245 each – proving that adventures can be engendered on a shoestring.
• emmatimmis.com
And one peregrinate great who spans the 20th and 21st centuries …
Dervla Murphy
A peregrinate legend, Murphy has always blazed her own trails. Now in her 80s, she perpetuates to peregrinate around the world as she has for more than five decades – conventionally alone and mostly on a bicycle. She is Ireland’s most prolific peregrinate inditer and is best kenned for her 1965 book Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle. Another 20 designations have followed, most recently Between River and Sea: Encounters in Israel and Palestine (2015). She peregrinates with the bare minimum, counting on the hospitality of local people. Her daughter Rachel and three grand-daughters live in Italy and join Murphy on her peregrinations when possible. The documentary Who is Dervla Murphy? is relinquished on 23 April. “Choose your country, utilize guidebooks to identify the areas most frequented by foreigners – and then go in the antithesis direction,” verbally expresses Murphy.
• dervlamurphy.com
ournalist Nellie Bly jumped off the page at me as I was researching Victorian female peregrinators. The more I got acquainted with her, the more I was intrigued by this stouthearted character who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Her crusades in print brought reforms in women’s asylums, orphanages, sweatshops and prisons.
The story that brought Bly the most acclaim was circling the globe in 72 days in 1890, beating the fictitious record in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. One hundred and twenty five years later, I followed in her footsteps.
We both travelled alone with one diminutive bag. She went by ocean liner and train. I flew. She peregrinated through the Victorian age. I travelled through the information age, blogging along the way. Tracing Bly’s race around the planet expanded my own world of adventure, and I became a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. The UK and Ireland have engendered many bold female peregrinators. My goal is to put them “on the map” as role models emboldening us to peregrinate out of our comfort zones.
Anna McNuff
Just start; that’s the best way to get going on an adventure, according to Anna McNuff who urges people to leave their trepidations at home and get outside. She would ken. In 2013, she cycled seven months and 11,000 miles on a pink bike taking in every state in the US. Last year she ran 1,911 miles along Incipient Zealand’s Te Araroa trail. McNuff calls them her mega-adventures, but she’s withal a fan of mini-adventures, such as running along Hadrian’s Wall, rollerblading 100 miles around Amsterdam, and midweek camping escapades around London. She recently ambulated out of her back gate with a bivvy bag, backpack, and an open European itinerary to be decided by votes from her adherents on gregarious media. McNuff is additionally on a mission to get children alfresco and exploring. Through her endurance challenges, she’s raised vigilance, as well as more than £20,000 for the charities Right to Play and The Outward Bound Trust. “I’m inspired by people who dive so deep into their personal well of self-notion that they achieve things which most would deem infeasible,” she verbalizes.
• annamcnuff.com
ustine Gosling
Gosling is a time peregrinator: she fuses all the things she dotes best – history, exercise and inspiring stories – into momentous challenges that reignite the past. She had never been on an expedition when she set off in August 2015 to peregrinate 5,000 miles on foot and bicycle along the 15 countries bordering the iron curtain disuniting western Europe from the former Soviet Cumulation. Postwar history came alive for her, an NHS physiotherapist, who was four-years-old when the Berlin Wall came down. Gosling will be more proximate to home, but further back in history, with a 240-mile Tudor-themed run from Bosworth Field, site of the last battle of the War of the Roses, to Westminster Abbey, final reposing place of Elizabeth I. She’ll be running 12-15 miles a day over a fortnight (she commenced 26 March) – and she wants you to join her along the way. Follow the route on Justine’s blog.
• justinegosling.com
Belinda Kirk
Kirk’s quest is to get people to live more adventurously. She has ambulated across Nicaragua, probed for camels in China’s Taklamakan desert, soi-disant Desert of Death, discovered rock paintings in Lesotho and was skipper of the first female crew to row non-stop around Britain, in a penalizing 2,101-mile, 51-day voyage. An expert expedition bellwether, she has managed remote trips for alfresco survival gurus Ray Mears and Bear Grylls. She launched Explorers Connect, a gregarious enterprise connecting people to adventures in the UK and overseas in 2009. It’s now a community of 25,000 from total abecedarians to experienced explorers who can link up with adventures, team-mates and adventure industry jobs. Currently, she’s establishing Britain’s first national day of adventure, Wild Night Out, to avail disadvantaged kids get alfresco. “I’ve optically discerned adventure change people’s lives, by giving inspiration and building confidence, ingeniousness and a reconnection with nature,” she verbalizes.
Hannah Engelkamp
Engelkamp trekked 1,000 miles around the circumference of Wales with a headstrong donkey denominated Chico. The dyad ambulated for proximately six months in 2013 starting and ending in Engelkamp’s hometown of Aberystwyth. Albeit the inspiration for her peregrination emanated from the fact that Wales had recently become the first country in the world encircled by a perpetual footpath, she discovered, a little too tardy, that her donkey couldn’t manage the 964 stiles and 783 osculating gates ahead of them. With no set course and no itinerary, they travelled as proximate to the coast and borders as they could; mainly wild camping, and sometimes slumbering in tipis, yurts and hay barns. Engelkamp embarked on a dream and returned with an orchestration to capture the peregrination in a book and film through crowdfunding. Eight hundred and twenty nine backers pledged £35,000 to make it transpire. Seaside Donkey recounts the story of Hannah and Chico’s odyssey in print and DVD. Engelkamp verbalizes: “Walking with a donkey was only outlandish by being about 60 years tardy. We were ambulating on green lanes and drove roads made for animal traffic – get out of your car and that history is still there, and facilely revived.”
• hannahme.com
Jacki Hill-Murphy
Former English and drama pedagogia Hill-Murphy has travelled to inhospitable places to reconstitute the peregrinations of daring female adventurers from the past. In tracking four valiant women who left inhibition at home and headed into the unknown, she pays encomium to their spirit and achievements. She has followed in the footsteps of Victorian explorers Isabella Bird, who travelled by yak across the Digar-La Pass in Ladakh, India, and Mary Kingsley – who pioneered the route to the summit of the volcano Mount Cameroon; and withal Kate Marsden, who trudged from Moscow to Siberia in search of a remedy for leprosy (a medico had tipped her off about the curative properties of a herb there). Hill-Murphy withal braved piranha-infested waters in a canoe to replicate the 1769 expedition of Isabel Godin, the only survivor of a 42-person, 3,000-mile expedition along the Amazon. Hill-Murphy’s peregrinates and those of her heroines come to life in her recent book Adventuresses. She’s now inditing a biography of Kate Marsden.
• jackihill-murphy.co.uk
Karen Darke
A fall on a rock-climbing expedition in 1992 virtually transmuted everything for Karen Darke. She cerebrated she would rather be dead than paralysed; that her adventures were over. But with friends, ingenuity and perseverance, she has found that most things are possible, including becoming a Paralympics silver medallist and an irrepressible peregrinator. Among other astonishing feats, she has crossed Greenland’s frozen dihydrogen monoxide cap sitting on skis, utilizing her arms to propel her; kayaked from Canada to Alaska over three months, and handcycled over the Himalayas. She gainsays being an adrenalin junkie, but admits to an addiction to the alfresco. Now she’s on the Road to Rio, training with the British paracycling team for the 2016 Paralympics in Brazil. Along the way, she’s constricting in adventures on wheels, dihydrogen monoxide and snow. Darke is the author of If You Fall … and Abysmal: An adventure beyond limits. She explicates: “I cerebrate adventures can be anything – minuscule or sizably voluminous – in your garden or on the other side of the world. It’s all about entering into the unknown and doing something that seems to some degree unachievable.”
• karendarke.com
Sarah Outen
Outen set out from Tower Bridge in April 2011 on her ecumenical expedition London2London via the World. Her body was her only engine. Four and a moiety years and 25,000 miles later she had rowed, cycled and kayaked her way around the northern hemisphere. Nothing ceased her; not even hurricanes, typhoons or solitude. Outen’s first major expedition was a solo row across the Indian Ocean in 2009, where she set records as the first woman and youngest person to accomplish such a feat. She has captured her epic expeditions in the books A Dip in the Ocean: Rowing Solo Across the Indian Ocean, and Dare to Do – chronicling her world journey and due out in November 2016. She was designated Adventurer of the Year at the National Adventure Awards on 16 March in Glasgow.
• sarahouten.com
Sarah Williams
She’s a runner, skydiver, bungee jumper, climber, cyclist and world peregrinator … and a former banker. In 2013 she swapped the rat race for marathons and other gruelling challenges and is currently training for the world’s toughest footrace, the 200-mile Marathon des Sables across the Sahara. Now an adventure aficionado, Williams’ incipient vocation is to incentivize and inspire women and girls to challenge themselves. She’s the progenitor and host of the Tough Girl podcast, weekly interviews where female adventurers share their peregrinations first-hand. From gold medallists to grandmothers, Williams’ podcasts include celebrated polar explorers Ann Daniels and Felicity Aston, and dozens of other female adventurers.
• toughgirlchallenges.com
Emma Timmis
Timmis is a runner, cyclist and climber, she was accoladed in the 2015 National Adventure Awards for physical endeavour. At 32, she’s already tackled some of the world’s toughest challenges, but takes it all in her stride. Last May, Timmis discarded her running shoes and rollerskated across the Netherlands in seven days with her friend Emily Pitts. Thanks to couchsurfing and imaginative budgeting, they only spent £245 each – proving that adventures can be engendered on a shoestring.
• emmatimmis.com
And one peregrinate great who spans the 20th and 21st centuries …
Dervla Murphy
A peregrinate legend, Murphy has always blazed her own trails. Now in her 80s, she perpetuates to peregrinate around the world as she has for more than five decades – conventionally alone and mostly on a bicycle. She is Ireland’s most prolific peregrinate inditer and is best kenned for her 1965 book Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle. Another 20 designations have followed, most recently Between River and Sea: Encounters in Israel and Palestine (2015). She peregrinates with the bare minimum, counting on the hospitality of local people. Her daughter Rachel and three grand-daughters live in Italy and join Murphy on her peregrinations when possible. The documentary Who is Dervla Murphy? is relinquished on 23 April. “Choose your country, utilize guidebooks to identify the areas most frequented by foreigners – and then go in the antithesis direction,” verbally expresses Murphy.
• dervlamurphy.com
