Featured image: Alice trekking across Saudi Arabia with Juicy and Lulu / Photo by Alice Morrison

Celebrating the journey of an ‘ageless adventuress’

by Mia Taylor

•  Egypt to South Africa: Biking the Tour D’Afrique, which involves riding from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa  – a 12,500 kilometer journey through 10 countries in 100 days.
• Sahara Desert: Completing the Marathon Des Sables, the toughest footrace on Earth that includes six marathons across the Sahara in six days, carrying all of your own food and equipment.
• Morocco: Atlas Mountains to Atlantic Trek. Morrison along with her guide, Rachid Aitelmahjoub, became the first people ever to hike from the highest point in North Africa, Mount Toubkal (4167m) to the Atlantic Ocean, crossing the Atlas Mountains en route.

 In addition to all of those accomplishments, Morrison ran the six day Everest Trail Race, an approximately 170-kilometre ultramarathon that takes place in the Himalayas of Nepal and covers a difference in altitude of more than 26,000 metres.

Side note, Morrison also hiked the length of Jordan. (Yes, as in the country.) The 675-kilometer feat took Morrison from the northern Jordanian town of Um Qais to the Red Sea in southern Jordan.

Currently, she is in the midst of trekking from north to south across Saudi Arabia, a two-part journey that Morrison began earlier this year and will finish at the end of this year. If she accomplishes that goal, Morrison will be the first recorded person to have completed the trek. Her journey has been covered by CNN and other media.

Get stories just like this one delivered straight to your inbox. Join the newsletter here.

Taking the first step

But how did this all start? To some degree, the answer is rage.

Morrison embarked upon her life of adventure after a company she built from the ground up in the UK was defunded by a newly elected conservative government years ago.

“I was CEO and we were partly a publicly funded company,” begins Morrison. “And the conservatives came into power and they were abolishing our funders. So, I had to fold my company into a different company. I had to make people redundant. I had to make myself redundant. So, I was very angry. We’d been very very successful at what we set out to do. There was no reason for the business to close.”

Morrison decided to find a productive way to channel her feelings of rage. And as someone who had spent the bulk of her childhood in Africa, the answer was to sign up for the Tour D’Afrique and cycle across that continent. For the first eight years of her life, Alice ran free in the African Bush. She studied Arabic and Turkish at Edinburgh University and has spent time in Syria, Egypt, England, Scotland, and more.

“It was a chance to get back to a continent that I loved. And off I went,” says Morrison. 

The turning point

It was a heat of the moment decision, not something Morrison spent years contemplating or preparing for. Her company folded in December and by January, the cycle across Africa was set to begin. Her only preparation for the event was sitting on a stationary bike in her living room, watching the British equivalent of Dancing With the Stars.

“I didn’t really have a great amount of fear or trepidation,” adds Morrison.

That attitude lasted until the race got underway, and Morrison and other bikers began clocking an average of 84 miles per day. At that point, the feelings of worry most of us would experience well in advance began to settle in for Morrison.

“That’s when I got the trepidation. It was really hard,” Morrison adds with a chuckle. But with characteristic determination and doggedness, she adds: “But it was too late. I was already on it.”

In retrospect, Morrison admits she was not in the proper shape for that first major adventure. She suffered as a result. That reality, however, didn’t prevent Morrison from embarking on the string of subsequent adventures that earned her the Indiana Jones title.

In fact, Morrison now says that initial experience was defining for her. It was full of adventure and excitement, not to mention 100 days of stunning African dawns and sunsets set against the backdrop of Africa’s red landscape.

“We cycled the whole continent. I felt pretty well like a goddess after I finished that,” she says.

Morrison has since dedicated her life to embarking on adventures and communicating them to others. That effort has included authoring four books: Dodging Elephants; Morocco to Timbuktu: An Arabian Adventure; Adventures in Morocco, and Walking With Nomads. She has also served as a television presenter, including for her BBC series: Arabian Adventures: Secrets of the Nabateans.

Words of wisdom from Alice

So what words of wisdom does Morrison have for other would-be explorers?

“If you want to lead a more adventurous life, start off on your weekends and on your summer holidays, going for hikes or bikes or explorations in the area where you live,” she says.  “Exploring is really about going out with your eyes and your ears open.”

And then she adds one last gem: “Courage is a muscle and you have to train it.”

“Honestly, I am brave. I am also a coward in some instances. But I deliberately try to push myself to become more courageous and to do more courageous things,” she says. “None of this is achieved without struggle.”

In this new series, we’re celebrating the ‘ageless adventuress – inspiring women over 50 who know it’s never too late to follow their dreams.  It doesn’t get much better than hearing from some of the planet’s boldest and most celebrated female adventurers about their inspirations, motivations and goals. While each woman’s story is unique, their lives have a common thread: Persistence. The willingness to dream big, bold dreams, and the audacity needed to bring those dreams to life. These women are the very definition of what it means to be a badass woman in today’s world. But it doesn’t happen all at once — it’s all about the journey and the lessons learned along the way.

If you know a woman we should feature, please email us at [email protected].

More Inspiring Women in Travel