Encouraged to travel independently and self-funded from a young age, Deborah has explored many of the wildest environments on the planet. She undertook her first solo expedition aged 19 crossing the Himalayas and Tibet, travelling on foot, horse-back, tractors and trucks. Staying with local families along the way and learning how people survive in harsh environments, this was a pivotal experience for Deborah and has led to her working as a wilderness guide – helping other people to experience and stay safe in wild places and hopefully inspiring a greater respect for our planet.
A strong interest in anthropology has led Deborah to study the natural crafts of the people she spends time with, from basketry to wood carving. Deborah has a Master’s Degree in Fine Art from the Royal Academy in London and has focused her artistic studies on creating and teaching traditional crafts.
Deborah is keen to pass on her fascination in different cultures and wild places to her own young children and has taken them on many adventures, to learn new skills and other ways of living, including time staying with the Kamba people in rural Kenya and a 3 month overland trip across Siberia, to live with the Kazakh Eagle hunters in the Altai mountains, and nomadic herders in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia.
Her work as an expedition leader has taken her to some of the world’s most extreme environments, from the blizzards and polar bears of Arctic Greenland as a snowmobile guide, to trekking in the jungle of Madagascar.
Deborah has extensive expedition experience to all of the earth’s major ecosystems including the jungles of Central America, the Amazon, Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka, South-East Asia and Borneo with the Penan people. She has spent many months at altitude, mountain trekking on 5 continents. Deborah has travelled in many desert environments from the South American Altiplano, canyonlands of Arizona and Utah, the Moroccan Sahara, Namib and the Kalahari with the San Bushmen in Namibia, Western Australia, to crossing the Taklimakan and the Gobi deserts.
Deborah is Course Director for WEMSI – International’s Wilderness Emergency Technician course at Glenmore Lodge in Scotland and has been on the teaching Faculty since 2017 delivering wilderness medical training for remote locations. She also teaches plant and fungi based Wilderness First Aid to Diploma students at the Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh where she studied Herbal Medicine. Deborah is a qualified Mountain Leader and a keen rock-climber. She holds the Sea-Kayak Award, White Water Rescue Technician and BCAP – Rainforest canopy rope access qualification. Deborah has co-presented an online Jungle Training course for Vivobarefoot and been an expert contributor on BBC World Service’s CrowdScience. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
She has always worked outdoors whilst in the UK, whether guiding people in the mountains, walking hundreds of kilometres surveying footpaths, teaching navigation or inspiring the next generation about the hunter-gatherers of the Stone Age. She is grateful to have learnt from so many people along the way. Deborah is passionate about sharing skills and her enjoyment of the natural world with others and has been instructing on bushcraft courses for thirteen years.
At home in the Lake District, Deborah spends as much time living outside, with her children, as possible. Long summers living in a tipi, foraging for wild foods, cooking on the campfire and tracking wildlife on a daily basis, have made bushcraft a way of life. In 2011, she realised a lifelong dream of planting a small native woodland and a teaching garden of edible, medicinal and useful plants and trees. She enjoys sharing this haven with others and it has become the base for some of our courses.