Isobel Wylie Hutchison

With no map and no guide, she walked alone across Iceland in 1924; she collected hundreds of plant specimens from Greenland, and

Alaska; she was the first woman to win the Mungo Park medal for outstanding contribution to geographical knowledge.

The polymath (poet, botanist, traveller, filmmaker, painter) and polyglot (speaking Gaelic,

Greek, Italian, Hebrew, Danish, Icelandic, Greenlandic and some Inuit) was born at Scotland’s Carlowrie castle in 1889, and she walked far and wide across Britain – Edinburgh to John o’Groats, Edinburgh to London, 100 miles in the Outer Hebrides – writing articles about her ‘strolls’ for National Geographic. A new book, Peak beyond peak, chronicles Isobel’s unpublished Scottish journeys, from diaries collected and transcribed by Hazel Buchan Cameron so you can trace the footsteps of an adventurer who lived by the motto ‘Why not?’ £13, taprootpressuk.co.uk