'At last I know I'm brave'

What makes the mother-of-two even more remarkable is that she has done it all without her sight.

Cycling across Costa Rica, white water rafting, even climbing up the 139-feet mast of a ship – all would be challenging for a sighted person. Ellen has done them all literally in the dark.

But to Ellen, these feats were ‘therapy’ for the real challenges in her life; growing up with parents who denied she had a sight problem and struggling to fit in and look ‘normal’ in a world in which she felt she had no place.

Relaxing at home in Oxford after a day of Nordic walking and writing her memoirs, Ellen says it was only when she celebrated her 60th birthday earlier this month that she realised she is finally at peace with her blindness.

“Looking back I’ve lived my most of my life in fear,” she said.

“But it has taken me this long – and a lot of hard lessons – to realise most of the fears we have as humans are just our imagination and a waste of time.”

Ellen was born in Australia, with severe visual problems, to parents who tried to deny it.

She was sent to convent school and didn’t tell the teachers she was blind. Nor did her parents.

She got by because at the time she had a small amount of vision out of the side of her eyes.

Schoolfriends covered for her, helping her to read off the blackboard and she always put her bag in the same place.

Ellen remembers: “I hid it very well. It took them nine months to notice and they let me stay on.”

When she was 13 an eye specialist told her parents that she needed a special school to help her come to terms with her condition. She learned Braille in six weeks, and got a university scholarship.

She said: “When I was growing up I never thought I had a place in the world. Living in Australia, a pioneering country, you were either fit to work or you weren’t.

“I remember an aunt asking my mum why they were bothering to educate me. Thankfully my parents did, but I still felt I was going through the motions of being alive for the early part of my life. Of pretending to brave, but in retrospect I know I wasn’t pretending – I am brave.”

But Ellen’s bravery sometimes put her in danger.

“As I went into my late teens and started mixing with other young people my daring streak appeared,” she explained.

“I decided to go to Japan with my friends. I felt so alive there that when we all came back I decided to go again – alone.

“I had to put trust in others and although I did travel about, I didn’t feel like I was adventuring, I was surviving – testing myself, literally forcing myself into difficult situations. I was pretty careless with my life at that point.

“I would cross roads without a white stick and suspect I was trying to prove to myself that I was worth something.”

At 19 she got a job in Canberra as a social worker and her friends decided to go trekking in Nepal.

“I said I wanted to go, but they were dubious about whether I would cope with the rough terrain and told me to speak to an expert to see if he thought I could manage it.

“I lied and said he thought I could manage, but within a half hour of getting there I knew I’d made a terrible mistake.

“It became apparent straight away I would have to go back to base camp and there I waited for my friends for five days, unable to really move around because of the dangerous terrain and unable to understand the language around me. I felt terrified.

“When it was time to travel back down the mountain with my guide I remember thinking: ‘This has to stop, this fear can kill me’.”

More successful ‘adventures’ included life modelling.

She said: “Being a nude model wasn’t salacious in any way, it felt liberating knowing that people were appreciating my body in an artistic way.”

Ellen moved to England because this country was better equipped.

“You have footpaths, great radio and zebra crossings,” she laughed.

She later married – now divorced – and had two children, a son Alex, 24, and Charlotte, 21.

And in her 40s and 50s she attempted even more challenges.

“It was 2001 and I was 51 when I rode across Costa Rica on the back of a tandem for Mencap. It rained all the way, but I loved it.

“While we were there I also got the chance to go white-water rafting and apparently a picture taken of it shows all the other people in the boat looking terrified and me just beaming with delight.

“I don’t have the expectations being able to see can give you. I just get the sensations and they can be thrilling.”

But climbing the mast of the aptly-named ship Tenacious was more terrifying than thrilling.

She explained: “The Jubilee Sailing Trust enables people with disabilities to crew alongside able-bodied sailors. I climbed the rigging in stages but soon became aware that the rigging was running out and had turned into an ever-decreasing ladder.

“I got within eight feet of the crow’s nest when I became so tired and realised that I was really in danger of falling. I felt such a failure, but a young deaf lad climbed up the starboard ladder and just held my hand for a while.

“It was symbolic. At that point I was 53 and I suppose I realised I had nothing to prove anymore.”

While her exploits may have calmed down a little, Ellen still wears a variety of hats.

She went to China to train visually impaired TV and radio journalists and enjoys Nordic walking and public speaking about her experiences.

The only sadness in her life was the recent death of her beloved guide dog Scottie.

“He was the first entity who made me feel I wasn’t just me facing the world,” she said.

Incredibly, Ellen believes she will end her life not blind as she started it, but with her sight.

She said: “I made a deal with God when I was little, that I would make my journey blind, if I got my sight back one day. Seven years ago my specialist told me that that will happen eventually thanks to a little camera that will work instead of my damaged retinas.

“That would be great. But whatever happens I will go seeing my blindness as a blessing not a curse, as it’s enabled me to live surrounded by people’s kindness and pushed me to do some amazing things.”