Post by Andrew Marshall

The Carlowrie team and myself were delighted when Isobel Wylie Hutchison who lived all her life at Carlowrie Castle made The Herald (Scotland) list of The 50 Scots who shaped the world. Isobel was number 43, in between Sir Sean Connery at 44 and Mary Queen of Scots at 42. We have some very exciting news later this year to share with you about Isobel getting further recognition she so richly deserved✨ 43 Isobel Wylie Hutchison: Poet, author, botanist, explorer and painter. Isobel Wylie Hutchison walked across Iceland solo, when everyone was warning her not to. It has been said she was the first Scotswoman to travel in Greenland. In the 1930s she journeyed as a lone woman across the top of Alaska and found herself marooned for seven weeks on a sandspit with a fur trader – then wrote a compelling memoir about it. In terms of inspirational women who lived outside the expectations of her age, she was a trailblazer. Rather than marry, Wylie Hutchison, who was brought up in Carlowrie Castle, devoted her life to travel and collecting rare plant species. When St Andrews University awarded her an honorary degree in 1949, it was said that she displayed “that indomitable spirit which defies hazard, danger and discomfort, and is the source of all great human achievement”.