Women on a mission

• A 40-year-old vet, Sabrina Verjee, ran 325 miles in under six days (equivalent to 12 marathons), surmounting 214 Lakeland summits, in June 2021

• In 1977, Naomi James was the first woman to circumnavigate the globe alone via Cape Horn

• Beryl Markham (right)—a lustrous and promiscuous Kenyan racing trainer —was the first to fly from England to America, reaching Cape Breton as her fuel feed froze in 1936. (Her lover, Denys Finch Hatton, died when flying five years earlier; a second pilot was killed two weeks later, awaiting take off)

• The 16-year-old Shoshone guide and interpreter for Lewis and Clark’s Missouri to the Pacific exploration (1803–06), Sacajawea, walked 2,000 wilderness miles carrying her baby in a papoose

• A Swiss adventuress, Ella Maillart, travelled 3,500 miles on ponies or camels from Peking via Tibet to Kashmir, with Peter Fleming (brother of Ian) in 1935. They endured seven months of sand, ice, wind, injury, danger and deprivation. He called her ‘tough, 31 and slightly wolf-like in appearance… a very good traveller’. She needed to be