Ursula Martin

Long distance walker and author of One Woman Walks Wales

In 2011, aged 31, Ursula kayaked the length of the River Danube. Starting in 2014, following an ovarian cancer diagnosis, she walked 3700 miles around Wales and published a book about it. She’s currently on her way home to Wales, after walking the entire way solo from Ukraine. onewomanwalks.com

“I think everybody’s scared of the woods. It’s human, that’s where the uncontrolled places are, in an animal sense. That’s where the predators, the bears and the wolves, used to live. But women also take the danger that exists in cities – fear of contact with men – out with them. We have this double layer of traditional fears.

“It’s quite artificial in a way, to go out alone and lie down on the ground, defenceless, and pass out. That really triggers the animal alarm in us. We’re vulnerable in so many ways, it’s not surprising it’s scary. You’d have to be brain dead if you didn’t jump awake at a sudden noise. I think I’ve got enough experience now to know that it won’t be that bad. So I will pretty happily lie down and go to sleep, and if I am jerked awake by a noise I’ll listen for a while and most of the time it’s fine. Noises get hugely magnified at night, so it helps to remember that it is probably just a mouse or other animal. Sometimes I realise that I’m listening so hard that all I can hear is my breathing and I’m like: “Okay Ursula, if the loudest thing you can hear is the sound of your breath, there’s nothing there. Go to sleep.” Sometimes you have to learn to switch off.

“Stories about women getting killed or seriously assaulted are the minority of cases, it’s just that they’re so awful that we do need to talk about them. But we also need to remember that it’s not necessarily going to be like that. In fact, it probably won’t be. Every time I’ve been discovered wild camping, people have brought me food. Every time.

“I do take precautions. I never let anybody see where I’m going to sleep. I would never walk into a village, plonk my tent down in the middle of it and go to the bar. I close myself to some invitations and experiences and that’s part of how I can go out there as a woman alone and do this. The sexual assault bell is always in the background, but I also want to remember that it’s incredibly unlikely that anything really awful is going to happen and it should never stop me from going out there in the first place.

“It’s a lot of effort to get right out into the middle of nowhere. A murderer gets tired, y’know? Much easier to go to the street corner or pick up a sex worker. Those are the real dangers that women experience.

“Don’t let it stop you doing anything. Because what are women going to do, if you tell them not to do all the things in all the places that are going to get them sexually assaulted? Horrific crimes have happened in every single location – sod it

– you might as well go to the forest then.”