Annabel Abbs is a writer and hiker, whose latest book, WIndswept: Walking in the Footsteps of Remarkable Women, looks at how distance walking in wild places changed women of the past and asks why we know so little about them.
In this entertaining and fascinating chat, we cover her wild and unconventional childhood in the wilds of Wales and her parents’ interest in schooling her and her sister based on the principles of the French author (and serial child abandoner) Jean-Jacques Rousseau as well as further into her life as she becomes a mum and then a woman facing an empty nest.
We discuss the motivation for the book, to discover the women walking and to make public their extraordinary feats and why what they did was so different from male walkers and adventurers. Hint: it’s less about conquering and more about resetting and finding freedom.
We talk about the fear (to a greater or lesser extent) that all women carry when partaking in in such activities alone and her absolute belief that we can harness this sensation and make it work for us.
The discussion also covers motherhood, its all-encompassing role in the life of women with children and how walking, moving, being outside near water, trees and open spaces can help everyone.
If you’re wondering where I got my information about acknowledging fear, thanking it and asking it to get behind you, it’s neither Glennon Doyle or Brené Brown that I heard it from (as I muse in the interview) but a woman named Andrea Callanan. It may not be hers originally but it was from her that I heard it.
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