Lily Dyu - Fantastic Female Adventurers: Truly amazing tales of women exploring the world

Introduction

My story of adventure

When I was a little girl, I was afraid of getting muddy and dirty. The outdoors was a scary, alien place to me. Mum and Dad didnt take us to the park or the countryside or on trips to the seaside. They were too busy working long hours in the family business, where we often helped out after school. I dreaded school PE lessons since I was usually last to be picked for a team. I thought that sports and the outdoors were for other people.

I never dreamed that I would be sporty and adventurous when I was older. But in my twenties, I took up running. The first time I laced up my trainers, it was a struggle just to get to the end of the road. But I kept trying and grew to love running. Soon I was taking part in races and I especially enjoyed splashing along muddy trails. I discovered nature, wildlife and the countryside for myself. I loved being in the outdoors and wild places they felt like home to me. Ive never looked back. A few years later, with my friend Michelle, I rode my bike the length of Britain, from Lands End to John oGroats. Wow! Me? The girl who hated sports at school? If I could do that, what else could I do? Since then, I have swum in rivers, lakes and seas, hiked up mountains, cycled all over the world, and Ive even run all the way across England, Scotland and Wales!

As a child, I didnt read stories about girls like me who grew up to be adventurers and explorers. Instead, I learned about male explorers, like Captain Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen, who raced to the South Pole, and Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to climb Everest. But Ive since discovered that many ordinary girls have grown up to be extraordinary adventurers.

In this book, you can join some of these fantastic women on their incredible journeys. You can encounter jellyfish and man-eating sharks alongside Beth French as she swims in the worlds oceans; ski to the North Pole with Ann Daniels while watching out for polar bears and lethal cracks in the ice; and hunt for the dancing Northern Lights with Jin Jeong as she cycles through Finland during her round-the-world journey. Feel the air beneath your feet as you perch on a cliff face while rock climbing with Gwen Moffat, Britains first female mountain guide. Experience the thrill of racing down rocky Himalayan trails with champion runner Mira Rai. Feel the icy-cold sea spray against your skin and marvel at waves as high as a house when you sail with Ellen MacArthur, the girl who saved up her lunch money to buy her first boat. And you can even fly into space with Britains first astronaut, Helen Sharman, and look out of her spaceship window at our astonishingly beautiful blue planet.

These womens stories have taught me many things: that youre never too old to develop a love of the outdoors. That adventures can be big or small from a roller-skating trip near home to scaling the worlds highest summits. That often the best part of a journey is the people you meet along the way. These women have inspired me to stay curious about other countries and people, to dream, and to never stop exploring our amazing world. I hope the stories in this book will inspire you, too to get outdoors, to marvel at nature, to wander and to wonder, and to treasure and protect our planet.

Adventures with the Ice Queen

Skiing to the North Pole

There was a loud bang and a rumble like thunder. The ice beneath their tent lurched and shook. Ann woke with a start, rolled out of her sleeping bag and unzipped the tent door to look outside. She was shocked to see that less than ten metres away closer than the length of three cars a frozen blue-white cliff had appeared where the flat ice had cracked. It towered four metres high taller than two people and was still slowly rising. The ice around their tent was also starting to crack.

Quick weve got to get out of here! Ann told the others. If they didnt move, the ice beneath them could split open and they would fall into the freezing water. Quickly they packed up their camp, threw everything on to their sledges and skied away as fast as they could. Only when they were a safe distance away did they dare to look back.

It was March 2002. Ann Daniels and her friends, Pom Oliver and Caroline Hamilton, were in the Arctic. They were skiing to the North Pole, trying to be the first all-female team to ski to both the North and South Poles. They had reached the South Pole two years earlier, skiing through Antarctica, a frozen continent surrounded by wild, icy seas. But the Arctic, on the other hand, is actually a frozen ocean: a collection of ice sheets surrounded by the land masses of Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland. These ice sheets constantly shift, crack and grind against each other as they are moved by ocean currents and the wind. This was why the ice had cracked earlier that morning.

The women had started their North Pole trip at Ward Hunt Island in Canada, high in the Arctic Circle. Their goal was to complete the 500-mile route in seventy-five days, pulling all their own food and camping gear. This is known as sledge hauling.

The record-breaking attempt was Anns idea. Ann is a mum of four and Britains first female North Pole guide.

As a girl I never imagined that I would one day be an explorer, Ann explains. I grew up in a city with four older brothers and we never visited the countryside. We played in the street and in the park. My only adventures were climbing trees and walls!

Ann left school at sixteen and got a job in a bank, before getting married and having triplets. When she was thirty and the triplets were eighteen months old, Anns husband showed her an advert in the newspaper looking for ordinary women to join the McVities Penguin Polar Relay to the North Pole where five teams would each ski different sections of the 500-mile journey as a relay.

I had never carried a rucksack, skied or slept in a tent, but I thought that if I could look after three toddlers then I could do anything! Ann says. She had given up her bank job when her babies were born and she was ready for a new challenge. If she were chosen to go, she thought it would be an amazing adventure, so she filled out the form and sent it off.

At the first selection weekend on Dartmoor, Ann was one of over 200 women, many of whom were outdoor leaders, PE teachers or simply very sporty. For two days they hiked across boggy moorland and camped out, mostly in the rain. It was so tough that after the two days every muscle in Anns body hurt and she cried in frustration. Despite this, she still wanted to be picked for the team.

For nine months Ann trained hard for the second and final selection weekend. She went to the gym, did military-style exercises in the garden when the triplets were asleep, and took them running in their pram. Her friends taught her how to read a map, use a compass and pack her rucksack properly. When Ann returned to Dartmoor, the instructors were amazed to see how much she had changed. She was much fitter, and she showed them how well she got along with others and worked as part of a team. Ann was thrilled when she was told she had been picked as one of just twenty women chosen for the polar relay.