5th May 2023
From The Brecon Beacons to The High Atlas Mountains
How Helen Menhinick is building a community of adventurous women.
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Helen Menhinick is a Mountain Leader, a business owner providing mountain skills and navigation training for Mountain Training and National Navigation Award Scheme, a Rescue Emergency Care (REC) first aid trainer, and a Rohan ambassador.
Helen’s passion for the outdoors is incredibly compelling. Since childhood, she’s been walking, hiking, and exploring the wilderness around her, but it wasn’t until later in life that she decided to make a career out of working outdoors. Since then, she’s become a qualified Mountain Leader and in 2020 she started her own business - Bryn Walking.
We recently caught up with Helen to find out more about her latest venture and hear about her recent expedition to Morocco.
Although initially, Helen started out offering guided walks and navigation training to anyone looking to learn outdoor skills, she soon found that there was a demand for more female-oriented training. Helen decided to rebrand her business to Bryn Walking for Women and focus more on cultivating a space for women in the outdoors.
Bryn Walking for Women is more than just an outdoor walking group. Many of the group’s regulars are retired women looking for new hobbies and friends, and in an area that is traditionally male-dominated, Bryn Walking for Women provides an opportunity for women to develop their confidence and form new friendships in a female-led environment.
“I've had people who have met on one of my walks and they decide to meet up together and go for a walk. They've made new friendships through it.”
Trekking in the High Atlas Mountains
Helen’s most recent expedition took Bryn Walking for Women to the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Two and a half years in the making thanks to delays and cancellations from Covid, this trip meant a lot to Helen because it was to be her first time taking Bryn Walking on an international adventure.
In early 2022 Helen visited Morocco with her friend and colleague Alan Ward to deliver some high-altitude first-aid training to the local guides and recce the area for her upcoming expedition. It was on this trip that Helen met Latifa Asselouf, one of only two female mountain guides currently working in the High Atlas Mountains. The two soon became good friends and Helen formally requested that Latifa should guide her all-female group during their expedition later in the year. It was important to Helen that her group should have a female guide, as it would not only be inspiring for the women on the expedition, but she felt it would allow them to better integrate themselves with the local culture.
This decision quickly paid off. After arriving at their destination, the group started exploring a local village where they came across a very old house that offered a fascinating look into the village’s history. Before they knew it, the female owners of the house had invited them inside to look around and they were soon sat on their rooftop terrace sharing tea and learning about each other’s lives and cultures. It made for an unexpected and incredibly authentic experience that most likely wouldn’t have been possible if they hadn’t had a female guide to connect them with the local women.
“We were so much at an advantage to have Latifa as our guide. As a woman, she could go into the local houses. The local women really wanted her to bring European women into their houses so that they could hear us talk about our lives.”
The rest of the trip was filled with beautiful blue skies, challenging treks across the mountainous Moroccan landscape, delicious food and drink, and learning about the lives and culture of the local women.
Although this was Bryn Walking’s first international expedition, it will certainly not be the last. Helen intends to run the same expedition next year and is always on the lookout for interesting trekking opportunities for her community.
To read more about Helen’s adventures, or to book yourself on her next expedition go to: brynwalking.weebly.com