Wild Women Of The Week: Kathryn Tyler
Podiatrist by day, adventurer by night and at weekends.
Kathryn may appear normal, but she is pretty badass!
A lover of gin and seeker of adventure with a Just Go Do It attitude, I just had to interview her as one of Lilly Wild’s Wild Women.
I met Kathryn on a Explorers Connect Silver Navigation Course in the Lake District a couple of months ago and knew that we were destined to be adventure buddies.
We’ve since been wild camping together in the Brecon Beacons and underground in a mine doing adrenaline pumping stuff!
I interviewed Kathryn driving on our way back from Snowdonia, whilst listening to our adventure song: Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop The Feeling.
So to immerse yourself in the experience you may like to listen and read!
So lets get to know her a little bit better…
Some rapid fire questions to measure her madness..
- Tea or Coffee? Tea
- Crumpets or Muffins? Chocolate chip muffin
- Ninja or Pirate? Ninja
- Morning or night person? Night owl
- Greatest fear? Heights. But I like to face them.
- What monopoly sqaure would you be? The dog counter, because then I can out the top hat on him! (possibly the best answer I’ve heard yet)
So you can’t peg Kathryn into a square.
Always the person to think outside of the box and go against the grain, lets see where Kathryn’s adventures have taken her…
1. What has been your most recent adventure?
I’ve just done Go Below, Ultimate Extreme Underground Adventure.
I wanted to have a weekend of fun and this seemed like a great opportunity to push your comfort zone, stretch your limits and challenge your mind.
For 5 hours you’re underground in a 200yr old Victorian slate mine in Snowdonia.
You’re then put through your paces with 9 zip lines running terrifingly high off the ground across vast caverns, including the longest and deepest in the world! Miles of traverses across cliff walls, some with planks, others with bolts and sometimes nothing at all! And we had to walk along a rotten beam across an abyss!
The scariest was a 20m free fall. My stomach goes and I feel slightly sick just thinking about it!
I went with Adelaide and a friend called James. James played it cool, but Adelaide and I were both hestitant about some of the challenges which involved heights. At one point my legs did give, but I still made it across the chasm!
2. What’s been your favourite adventure so far?
It has to be storm chasing in the USA.
It was my first awesome trip and the catalyst for me to doing more epic sh*t!
3. What’s been your greatest achievement to date?
Summiting Mount Kilimanjaro, 5,895 m.
This was my first multi-day trek at high altitude and I found it quite a challenge! However, it was awesome and added fuel to my addiction to adventures.
4. What has been your lowest point on one of your adventures?
I have been lucky on my adventuring so far, I haven’t experienced anything soul crushing nor sufferred from extreme altitude sickness or been badly injured.
(Kathryn was being far too modest, so I asked her again…)
Ok, so the lowest moment for me was probably on the Oxfam 100km trail walker in the middle of the night, when all of my team was sufferring from blisters and fatigue.
They were chorusing ‘I Hate You Kathryn’ and as I was the one who had persuaded them to do it, I felt I had to be the chirpy one and keep them motivated!
Actually, ‘I Hate You Kathryn’, seems to be a common theme on my adventures….. My friends seem to say YES without quite realsing what I have got myself and them into!
5. How do you fit adventure into your life?
I dedicate my weekends to adventure and am always on the lookout for cool stuff to do.
I also surround myself with adventurous people, so opportunties come up and I feel motivated and inspired to explore and push myself too.
6. What do you do to get in the right mind set to kick ass as an adventurer and business owner?
I get fit for my adventuers by having personal training 3 times a week. HIIT workouts are not my favourite, but the most effective. Not having to do burpees feels like a holiday!
I also do yoga and pilates during the week too.
7. What was your first wild camping experience like?
I first went wild camping in January 2015 on top of Leith Hill, Surrey. It was awesome.
I was with 4 friends, 1 newly acquainted on top of the hill and a dog. The temperature dropped to -8, which was quite chilly in our bivvy bags, but hot mulled wine a la jet boil made it worth it!
We tucked ourselves away in the wood to hide from the view of passer bys and hoping it would be a little warmer!
In the morning I was served a hot bacon and mushroom roll in my frost covered bivvy bag before heading back to my car for a 10km run!
I did feel smug when I came across some mountain bikers in the morning, who thought they were rather macho and pretty awesome for being up so early. But they hadn’t just slept in the woods!!
8. What’s your top tip for women adventurers?
You must be ok with peeing outside. For climbing kilimanjaro I may have practiced using the SheWe outside and in the shower…
“Just Do It. You don’t need a boy. Just get on with it and don’t be scared.”
9. What are your top 3 pieces of kit that you can’t do without when wild camping?
My sleeping bag, sleeping mat, enough clothes (and gin).
10. What’s the one book, film, blog or podcast that’s had the biggest impact on your life?
Alastair Humphreys without a doubt.
His microadventure blog posts and books showed me that adventure doesn’t have to be reserved for the weekend and you don’t need to spend lots of money.
But you can inject adventure into your life mid-week and it can be awesome, not matter what the size. I just loved the 5–9 microadventure concept.
11. Who is your Wild Women Heroine?
Belinda Kirk, founder of Explorers Connect
If you have any questions for Kathryn then then please post them in our Wild Women Tribe Facebook group :)
This post was made with love over on the Lilly Wild blog — if you enjoyed it and want to have your Wild Women inpsiration delivered to your box each week, then sign up to our email!
