Current Status
"Now I am living in Shropshire."
My Life & Travels
These journeys mark the end of an era when communication was by mail and unreliable phone links. Since these journeys were undertaken, social media and the Internet have provided a safety net that was not there before, marking these as probably the last of the era of true explorers.
I was born in London and as a very young child at the outbreak of World War II, I was evacuated to a coal mining village in South Wales. It was there, amidst the grief of separation, that I found consolation in making up stories—I used to call them 'having an adventure.'
Teachers began to say I was a born writer. I left school at fifteen, joined the Women's Royal Army Corps, married, and raised three children while working as a freelance photographer. Later, I studied for a degree in world religions at London University.
"By the age of 47, with the children off my hands, I decided it was at last time to see something more of the world. I had no hesitation at all in deciding that a bicycle was the ideal transport for my purpose."
My first project was to ride from Karachi to Kathmandu along the line of the Indus River and the Himalayas. Five months and five thousand miles later I achieved my goal. Back home, I wrote 'Riding the Mountains Down'.
Following that success, I rode from London to Jerusalem, following the paths of the Crusaders. It was another five thousand mile saga, challenging in quite a different way from the Himalayan venture, but equally rewarding.
Probably my most dangerous undertaking was following the course of the Nile from the Mediterranean to the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda. It was a journey of stunnnig contrasts—landscapes, diverse peoples, poverty, and the challenge of survival in civil war zones. This became 'Riding the Desert Trail'.
Later journeys took me to the Niger in West Africa ('Frail Dream of Timbuktu'), through the English landscape ('Riding North One Summer'), the Outer Hebrides ('The Fragile Islands'), and Eastern Turkey ('Beyond Ararat').
My most recent travel book, 'Like Water in a Dry Land', explores present-day Palestine, where I used my knowledge of the area's history to understand the modern anguish of the region.