Background
She was born Virginia Pepper in Godalming, Surrey in 1947.
She was born Virginia Pepper in Godalming, Surrey in 1947.
She was the first woman to be awarded the Polar Medal, and as such was invited to join the Antarctic Club in recognition of her research work for the British Antarctic Survey and University of Sheffield into very low frequency radio propagation. After school she took up deep-sea diving and was recruited to work for two years in Wester Ross for the National Trust for Scotland. She also trained at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, took marine radio officer courses and joined the Women's Royal Army Corps Territorials.
In 1968 she organised the first ascent of the longest river in the world, the River Nile, by prototype hovercraft.
Three years later she organised the first transnavigation of British Columbia, entirely by river. In 1972 she devised a plan to circumnavigate the world along its polar axis, and ten years later her Transglobe Expedition team became the first to reach both poles, to cross Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean, through the North West Passage.
In the 1980s she moved to Exmoor National Park and began to raise a herd of pedigree Aberdeen Angus cattle and a flock of black Welsh Mountain sheep, becoming a highly proficient hill farmer on one of the highest working farms in the South West.