As female trailblazers go, pioneering explorer Isabella Bird had given herself a mountain to climb.
Scoffed at by both men and women in the Victorian era, the Yorkshire lass, plagued by ill health since childhood, set off on her own in 1871 on an expedition to see the world in a series of adventures on horseback.
She cantered across Hawaii, the Rocky Mountains in the lawless Wild West, Japan, from Baghdad to Tehran, and finally through Tibet after her doctor had said an open-air life would help her mental health, headaches, insomnia and a spinal problem.
At 40 and just under 5ft tall she was to encounter grizzly bears, fall in love with a one-eyed Wild West outlaw and scale dizzying peaks.
And now this astonishing wander woman’s exploits have inspired three equally feisty fellow females to retrace her hoofprints in a new BBC adventure.
Comedian Ruby Wax joins singer Melanie Brown and actress Emily Atack in Trailblazers: A Rocky Mountain Road Trip to relive her largely forgotten exploits.
Both Mel, 47, and Emily, 32, admit they’d never heard of Isabella before signing up for the show – but Ruby, 69, said: “Isabella was my heroine.
“It was really important to follow her trail. We were seeing what a woman could do more than 100 years ago –sleeping in the snow, being so brave around men who were killers. All of these desperados would tip their hats to her.
“To me, she’s the beginning of the whole feminist thing and we never hear about her.” Mel said when she was asked to take part she thought: “Wow, I would like to watch that show as I’ve never heard of that woman. It’s not in our history books. Why are all these women not being praised and celebrated?”
Emily added: “She was a pioneer woman and the three of us, we are trailblazing women too, we are rule breakers. We’ve done things in our own way, in our own path in a world where it’s harder to do that as a woman.”
The three-part BBC2 series is based on one of the books Isabella wrote about her trips – A Lady’s Life In The Rocky Mountains – and letters she sent to her sister Henrietta who lived on the Isle of Mull in Scotland.
Travelling alone, Isabella crossed the Wild West during the Gold Rush era, completing 800 miles on horseback through the Colorado Rockies.
She cropped her Victorian skirts to ride her horse, showing her pantaloons underneath... and in one letter to Henrietta she complained that people were accusing her of being masculine for wearing the frilly trousers.
From the start of her American journey in 1873 she became known throughout Colorado as “the Englishwoman who rode as well as a man”.
So the star trio had a lot to live up to as they also saddled up for their road trip. For Ruby, it was her first time on a horse since a terrible riding accident and Emily had never ridden before.
At a riding school and cattle ranch the trio used teamwork and determination to take on the intimidating job of wrangling cattle before setting out.
As they journeyed into the mountains, Ruby, Mel and Emily visited Estes Park, a stunning valley surrounded by snow-capped peaks that Isabella described in her book as “exceeding all her dreams”. Mel expresses similar thoughts as the adventure goes on, calling it the “road trip of a lifetime”.
The former Spice Girl said: “We were three girls from three different walks of life coming together, helping each other figure stuff out, and having an absolute blast doing it.
“I learned that I’m actually the sane one and how much it reaffirmed to me how really open I am for challenges and adventures.” At one point she found herself on her horse near “a terrifying cliff drop” thinking that “this woman just did this without even thinking of falling. She was on that mission with no fear”.
The trio learned about Rocky Mountain Jim, the one-eyed outlaw Isabella met on her travels. She fell in love with the whisky-drinking desperado who was her guide. Writing about their first encounter, Isabella recalled: “In the narrowest part of St Vrain canyon I saw a fearful object and I wanted to turn back fearing either he was not sober or in an ‘ugly fit’.
“However, when he got up to us my fears diminished. He is a most extra-ordinary man. His appearance was frightful but as soon as he spoke he was fascinating with his gentle cosy manner, low musical voice and slight Irish brogue...
“His poor disfigured face beamed with nice, kindly feeling.”
And soon her curious companion began having deeper feelings for the amazing woman he’d met.
Isabella wrote: “Then came a terrible revelation... he was attached to me and it was killing him. It began on Longs Peak, he said. It made me shake all over and even cry. He is a man whom any woman might love but no sane one would marry.
“Nor did he ask me to marry him, he knew enough for that.” Jim was reputed to have been a brutal “bushwhacker” during the Civil War and lost his eye in a fight with a bear.
But Isabella was no less formidable and was determined to conquer the Rockies’ 14,255ft Longs Peak. With Jim as her guide she set off with two male companions. Soon the men complained that Isabella, in her thick tweed skirt and bloomers, was a “dangerous encumbrance”. But it didn’t faze her.
And Ruby, Mel and Emily also took a crack at the Long Peaks feat Isabella achieved nearly 150 years ago.
For Emily it was a highlight of the trip. She said: “I really come into my own when I’m physically and mentally challenged.”
She told how “learning more and more about Isabella, that it was all rooted with the fact that she was struggling with her mental health” hit home with her.
“I’m always very open with how I struggle with my mental health at times and how I overcome those things by getting out there in the world and challenging myself,” said Emily. “I really related to that.”
When Isabella returned to Britain, she married Edinburgh doctor John Bishop in 1880. But after her husband’s death six years later she set off as a missionary to India, travelling on to Baghdad and Tehran. In the 1890s, in her 60s, she journeyed along the Yangtze and Han rivers in China and Korea before her death in Edinburgh in 1904, aged 72. Throughout her astonishing life, she never made a fuss when encountering problems.
At the age of 58, while riding through Ladakh in Kashmir, her horse tried to jump out of a rising river, missed its footing and rolled over her, cracking her ribs.
“A struggle, a moment of suffocation,” she wrote, but “I made light of it.” The next day, she was back in the saddle.
The first woman allowed to join the Royal Geographical Society, she paved the way for other female explorers and travel writers, inspired by her free spirit and sense of adventure. Now the story of her astonishing exploits will be seen by millions.
Trailblazers: A Rocky Mountain Road Trip starts tomorrow night (Sunday), BBC2, 9pm
