Meet the 21st century female explorers who are real-life Moanas
A lot of people’s day-to-day working life involves sitting in traffic or being squished onto a train or bus, grabbing a lukewarm cup of coffee and then sitting down at a desk to stare at a screen for the next 7-8 hours.
But not for Lucy Shepherd, who’s job title is literally Explorer. Her office? The entire world.
“As a child, my favourite movie was Tarzan. I felt most comfortable when I was outside climbing trees,” explaind Lucy. “I was always testing how high I could go – which meant I broke my arms four times, once both at the same time!”
As Lucy got older, this adventurous spirit never left her, and at 18 years old she began self-funding short expeditions by herself and with friends.
“In 2015, I had just got back from a month of hiking 500 miles through the Spanish mountains – a route, it turns out, no one does. I said to my parents out loud for the first time, ‘I want to be a full-time explorer,’” Lucy says. “I thought they’d laugh at me, but they didn’t. From there, it was a case of securing brand deals, sponsorship, grants, and working professionally as a guide for Arctic trips in Svalbard, Norway.”
One of Lucy’s recent expeditions saw her trek deep into the Amazon rainforest, taking on a mammoth journey across the Kanuku Mountains from east to west, something never attempted by anyone before. The expedition was self-filmed for a documentary, Secret Amazon: Into The Wild, which aired on Channel 4 earlier this year.
‘The reality of a trip like that is, every night, you’re lying in your hammock naked picking ticks off of your body – and if you can’t reach them, you’re calling your teammates to help get them,” she explains. “The jungle is a very grubby place – you’re putting wet clothes back on every day, crawling through the thickest undergrowth, flies are biting and stinging you.
“You’re genuinely putting your life on the line, and there have been some scary times that have been too close to call, but my biggest fear is not taking opportunities. A normal nine-to-five job is what fills me with horror!”
For a girl who grew up being told she would be the “female Bear Grylls”, Lucy is now quite literally living her childhood dream. “I love nothing more than being in the complete wilderness with a small group of people. I’m overtly aware that we as humans are not separate to nature. I often do citizen science on my trips, because if I’m somewhere either very few or no people have been before, then it’s important to collect data, but I’m a great believer that stories can change the world. The world is a beautiful place, and I feel a responsibility to share it through my filmmaking of my expeditions.”
Someone else who shares Lucy’s adventurous, Moana-like spirit is Alice Hickson, a freediver who holds nine national records, including diving to 62 metres with no fins and being able to hold her breath for 6 minutes 58 seconds.
But it’s not the records she does it for, having discovered freediving, which is underwater diving relying purely on breath-holding, about 10 years ago.
“I was always either in a swimming pool, in the sea or paddling in a river growing up. My dad loved swimming in the sea, and I followed suit,’ says Alice.
“In my twenties, I moved to Bristol, but I became a bit lost. I wanted to find my way back to water, but found lane swimming monotonous. I remembered watching The Big Blue, an iconic freediving film, when I was about 12 years old, and decided to give it a go. My first dive was in a quarry in Chepstow, in October. It was freezing, but as soon as I was in the water I felt this peacefulness – everything clicked and I knew it was what I was meant to be doing.”
Now, 10 years later, Alice is a freediving instructor living in Cornwall and dives in the sea most days of the year.
“There’s a whole other world under there to explore and connect to. In the summer I see seals every day and I get to know them – they’re like the spaniels of the sea, following me and nibbling on my fins. There’s octopus, jellyfish, all the colourful wrasse and massive crabs and lobsters – the other day I saw a lobster with claws bigger than my hand! You get sharks here too – cat sharks, nurse hounds and blue sharks.”
But none of that compares to a special interaction Alice shared with a dolphin in Egypt. “A group of us went offshore on a boat and we came across a lone dolphin. I stayed with it for about an hour – because of the fins and weights I wear for freediving, I was able to move like the dolphin and it was like we were dancing together. At one point it picked up a shell off the seabed and tapped it in front of me as if to say, ‘Come and get it.’ That was an amazing, once in a lifetime experience.”
Another adventurous soul is Rebecca Ferry, full-time mum-of-five and Pilates instructor who started climbing mountains at age 40.
“I’ve always been a sporty person and a keen runner, but it wasn’t until 2015 that I took part in my first endurance race, the Marathon des Sables in the Sahara Desert,” explains Rebecca. “That experience gave me a taste for endurance races, and in 2018, I was running a race in Nepal when I looked up at this beautiful mountain in the Himalayas called Ama Dablam. I thought to myself, ‘One day I’m going to climb that.’”
In 2021, Rebecca did just that, and has gone on to climb Everest and K2, the highest and second highest mountains in the world.
“When I’m standing on top of the world, it feels amazing, but the achievement often doesn’t hit me until a week later when I’m back home and buying my lunch in M&S and suddenly I think, ‘I climbed Everest.’”
But it’s not all glamour, as Rebecca explains. “You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Sometimes you’re sleeping on an uneven platform in a tent in a storm. You don’t wash for weeks and you’re wearing the same clothes for weeks on end, so you have to accept feeling dirty. A lot of time is spent waiting for the right weather window, so you have to have patience and be able to get on with people when there’s not a lot to do.”
While the endurance challenge is certainly what drew Rebecca to climbing mountains, she admits that it’s given her a totally different perspective on life. “There have been many summits I haven’t reached, and some of the failings have been the best experiences. Climbing mountains is about so much more than reaching the top.”
Now, Rebecca is taking on a new challenge: to row solo across the Atlantic. “I’m genuinely going to be like Moana!” says Rebecca. She’ll be spending 40 days at sea attempting the crossing in 2026, despite having to learn to row as a complete beginner.
“I’m not a rower. But I have this desire to want to evolve and keep pushing myself and I’m aware I might fail, but it doesn’t matter,” says Rebecca.
Something Rebecca, Alice and Lucy all have in common is their love of being outdoors as children. So many of us do, but crucially, these three women have held on to that childlike curiosity for adventure and exploration into adulthood, something that the character of Moana reminds us of.
‘I think I am quite like Moana in many ways,” says Rebecca. “It’s this fearlessness and inner spirit to want to do something positive and challenging where I think we’re aligned. Moana has a joyful innocence, and I think what we should learn from her is that we’re all more capable than we realise.”
Moana 2, which is in cinemas now, continues the delightfully inspiring story of Moana. After receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors, Moana journeys alongside Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) and a new crew to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters for an adventure unlike anything she’s ever faced.
For Lucy, she enjoys that the Moana films don’t put a romantic love story front and centre. “Instead of being a damsel in distress, Moana shows us a different way to be a woman. I totally identify with her, especially in how she doesn’t take no for an answer and her lust for adventure,” she says. “She teaches us that the world is your oyster and, even though you might be one person, you can make a difference in the world.”
So, how can we all be a bit more Moana – and indeed more Lucy, Alice and Rebecca?
While they might be exploring different parts of the world – the jungle, the sea and the mountains – all three women agree that exploring requires curiosity, enthusiasm and a willingness to engage in the world.
Lucy recommends capturing that adventurous spirit by spending a night under the stars. “It might seem a bit childish, but even just pitching a tent in your garden will give you that sense of adventure. It might not be a great night’s sleep, but it’s a way of accessing that curiosity again. When I was working a 9-to-5 job, a friend and I would take the train from the office to a station that looked remote, find a field and pitch up for the night. Then we’d be back in the office by 9am the next morning. It was our way of getting a bit of adventure in our lives!”
For that next step, Lucy recommends checking out the guided trips offered by The Wild Tales, who run survival trips in places like Guyana, and Turgleder, who offer affordable Arctic trips in Northern Norway and which Lucy sometimes leads herself. “I’ve taken people of all ages and walks of life across the Arctic, from a 75-year-old with a pacemaker to a young guy who spent all his time at a computer and wanted to do something new.”
For sea-faring Alice, she recommends the freediving courses offered by PADI, SSI and AIDA, but they're not the only way to access the underwater world. “Snorkelling’s a great place to start, if freediving scares you. Cornwall and Pembrokeshire are great for snorkelling, and Scotland too, although it’s colder!” she says. “But if freediving does interest you, I know people in their 40s, 50s and 60s still diving deep and smashing records. I’ve taught a 4-year-old and a 67-year-old to freedive – it really is possible at any age.”
If you’ve got your eye set on climbing a mountain, Rebecca has good news, too. “You’re never too old to try these things. Yes, I was always sporty, but I didn’t start ultra-running until my mid to late 30s, and I was 40 when I climbed my first mountain.” Rebecca suggests checking out the National Outdoor Centre in Wales called Plas y Brenin, to get your climbing adventure started. “The older we get, the reality is it does take more effort to get up and train and put the time in, but you’re so much more appreciative of being able to do these things. Age isn’t a barrier to anything.”
Moana 2 is in UK cinemas now.
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