Welcome to Jacki Hill-Murphy's official website

Here you will find all of Jacki’s speaking engagements, information about expeditions, her charities and much more. Look a little further on and you will discover more about Jacki’s writing and have the chance to follow her on Twitter for updates on books, events, expeditions and more. ​​ 

Chatting to Catie Friend
Jacki Hill-Murphy has spent the last 10 years researching female explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries and recreating their expeditions.
She does so as faithfully as possible, at the same time of year with similar forms of transport where possible.
This episode is a little different to the others, because as well as the incredible adventures and journeys Jacki goes on, part of the fascination for me was in the stories of these women. In an era where they had almost no rights of their own; were expected to marry; wear dresses and corsets, they decided to take on arduous, dangerous journeys with very little experience.
In this chat, we discuss how she got into this fascinating field, what she has learned about these women and their discoveries. We also discuss what she thinks they can teach the 21st century woman about adventure.
A lot of the chat, however, is good old rip-roaring adventures of the Victorian era, where a few intrepid women struck out on their own for myriad reasons and recorded their journeys, their near-death experiences and the cultures they discovered.
Towards the end, I discover how Jacki is also helping adults who were brought up in care to discover the great outdoors to aid their mental health – www.undertheskyevents.org - and how she supports a women’s charity in Bristol that helps victims of domestic abuse. www.womankindbristol.org.uk
Jacki has written three books on the subject of female explorers, two are available on her website, www.jackihill-murphy.co.uk, and the third will be published in February 2021.
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(The above courtesy of Catie Friend website: https://www.catiefriend.com/podcast/2020/12/24/chatting-to-jacki-hill-murphy​)

​“Jacki’s journeys are unique and so are her presentations. Her research, determination and enthusiasm for her subjects is boundless.
​Prepare to be entertained and inspired by a singular lady!” – Belinda Kirk, Founder of Explorers Connect

Jacki Hill-Murphy MA, FRGS is an explorer, teacher, author and speaker and has spent the past few years exploring and filming some of the most inhospitable and remote places on earth. In 2007 Jacki left her job as an English and Drama teacher and set off down the Bobonaza in the Amazon Basin in a dug-out canoe. This became the first adventure in her project to recreate the journeys of the early women explorers; spurred on by the fusion of amazing, unsung women from history and her love of travel.
There are many reasons why she loves  being an explorer including gathering memorable experiences that last forever recorded on film and in writing, pushing herself to the limit and being loosed from her cultural moorings. Her first major expedition was in 1988 when she crossed Africa via the Sahara Desert and West Africa, she has since been to South America, Africa, India, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Russia and lived in Turkey and the United States.
​Jacki’s favourite quote is: “Off the beaten track is the real world” - Isabella Bird.
The Recreating the Journeys of the Early Women Explorers Project is now in its twelveth year and Jacki is completing the book about it. The fusion of amazing, unsung women from history, travel and film making has become a passion for her. So far Jacki has recreated the journeys of:
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  • Isabela Godin, the first European women down the Amazon in 1769. This was done by travelling down the River Bobonaza in Ecuador and onto the River Pastaza in Peru in a dugout canoe and investigating the real truth behind her story at each landmark.

  • Mary Kingsley, who climbed Mount Cameroon in Africa in 1894 by a new route and nearly perished from the shear enormity of the the undertaking.

  • Isabela Brookes, who died in the Llanganates in Ecuador in 1912. This was part of the ‘Search for Gold’ expedition that she organised with Ken Hames of BBC Beyond Boundaries as survival leader.

  • Isabella Bird, who crossed the Digar-La Pass in Ladakh on a yak in 1889. Jacki relived every aspect of Isabella’s book during her 150 mile trek which included finding the house she stayed in and having tea with the King of Ladakh.

  • Kate Marsden who undertook a gruelling journey by horse, sledge and cart thousands of miles across Siberia to take relief to the lepers in 1892. Jacki replicated her journey as closely as possible on buses, trains and boats.

  • UPCOMING (October 2022): British explorer Sir Samuel Baker and his Hungarian-born, freed-slave, wife Florence Baker ran for their lives to escape a surprise attack from the villainous slave-trader About Saood in 1872 and fought them off for seven days while running north to Fort Patika from Masindi village, near Lake Albert. 
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Jacki feels that these women’s achievements were sensational for their era as they endured massive hardships while receiving little or no support and showed tremendous courage. They were pioneers in an age that did not celebrate female accomplishment as highly as we do today.​
Jacki is patron of Womankind and founding director of Under the Sky Events.
Listen to Jacki talk about what she does.

Jacki completes walk for Womankind!​

​From 3rd to 5th August Womankind Patron Jacki Hill-Murphy has walked over 30 miles through Bristol’s residential areas to raise awareness of issues that women may have been suffering during the pandemic, and that Womankind’s telephone and webchat helpline is there for them.   She was joined for parts of the route by Womankind volunteers, staff and Trustees, and chatted to local women along the way.  Jacki was also raising funds for Womankind through her appeal page: https://localgiving.org/Jacki-walks-for-Womankind which has raised over £600 (including Gift Aid) so far and will remain open until Friday 14th August.  Thank you Jacki for your support for Womankind!
​Jacki publishes through her company Adventuress Publishing and has written two highly regarded books with a third being published by Pen and Sword Publishers in 2021

Please click the covers if you would like to order online 

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"The Extraordinary Tale of KATE MARSDEN"
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"ADVENTURESSES"

To be published in Febuary 2021 

"I am on a project to rescue the names of the early women explorers and pioneers from obscurity. These are women from all over the world who for different reasons, travelled to far away unknown places so that they could document the lives of people who were hitherto unknown in environments that could only be dreamed of; they showed enormous courage and tenacity in their pursuit of knowledge and they wrote some of the first travel books and in doing so, enlightened the world to the plights and pleasures of other societies.

They suffered depravations and faced enormous danger along the way, this lack of safety and backup would be unthinkable to us today and if their lives had been lost, who would have known? Their courage excites and impassions me.

I have been recreating some of these journeys, as closely to the original ones as possible, and have travelled the length of the Amazon River in a dug-out canoe in the footsteps of Isabela Godin, the first known woman to travel the length of the Amazon in 1769. I have followed the 1895 journey of Mary Kingsley up Mount Cameroon in West Africa, climbed over the Himalayas of Ladakh to retrace the journey of Isabella Bird in 1889 who did it on a yak and travelled into the Llanganate Mountains of the Andes in Ecuador, one of the wildest and most inhospitable places on earth, in the footsteps of Isabel Brook who died there within three days of setting out to search for the lost Inca gold.

It is important to me to travel the same routes, travel at a similar time of year and although I benefit from better equipment I am mindful of what they took with them and how they dressed, in fact I have walked up a mountain in Africa in a long Victorian dress, in the rain, paying my deepest respects to them as I stepped back into clean and dry trousers afterwards!" - Jacki Hill-Murphy
Jacki with the Candozi Tribe on the River Pastaza, Amazon Basin
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