The Hardy Women Challenge on Brownsea Island

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Above are a small selection of photographs taken during the Hardy Women Challenge. As you can see raising money can be a lot of fun!

If you'd like to get involved with future "Challenges", please let us know by emailing your contact details to Fiona Sansom at

A beautiful September weekend saw 29 Hardy Women (it's official!) and four hardy Dorset Wildlife Trust staff spend a weekend in the woods of Brownsea Island's nature reserve, managed by Dorset Wildlife Trust on the National Trust owned island. 

The idea was to leave behind family, phones, ipods, make-up, men and even the hair straighteners for a weekend back to nature, finding out what we are made of as well as learning more about and, contributing to, the conservation work that is needed to protect the wildlife of this very special island. 

All our Hardy Women raised sponsorship, to help protect the wildlife and habitats of Brownsea and our other nature reserves.  A first for the island and the reserve, the weekend tested our initiative, stamina and ability to work in a team, starting with making shelters. 

The two teams gelled from the first, in fact they often pooled resources, proving that women really do know how to get things done.  We learned all about the wildlife of the island, how to forage, how to restore red squirrel habitat and how good food tastes when you are camping out. 

To be honest, it wasn't all hard work - we witnessed a spectacular sunset from a deserted beach, basked in Indian summer temperatures and let our (indescribably messy) hair down with a raft race across a beautiful blue pool on the last day. 

We raised a lot of money as well (total not confirmed yet) and even more morale and found out how much the women of Dorset (and some from Wiltshire, Somerset & Avon) care about wildlife.