Written by Marie Christine Ridgway and published by
Victor Gollancz in 1991 and Victor Gollancz Paperback in 1992 (OUT OF PRINT)

In 1964, aged just twenty, Marie Christine D’Albiac married John Ridgway, a penniless Paratroop officer with a passion for adventure. Two years later John rowed across the North Atlantic with Chay Blyth, and their lives were changed forever. This achievement inspired the Ridgways to set up their own school of adventure, beside the sea loch at Ardmore, where the North West Highlands sweep down to the lonely Atlantic, a dozen miles south of Cape Wrath, the top left hand corner of Scotland.

In this harsh environment of paraffin lamps and peat fires, the girl who had worked at the Arts council in London’s West End, found herself surrounded by macho escapists, marathon runners, round-the–world yachtsmen, rock climbers and fitness fanatics of every stripe. She decided to beat them by joining them. Marie Christine has learned survival the hard way. She cooks, administrates and smokes salmon, as well as being a full-time wife to a formidable, hard-driving but vulnerable man and a very keen gardener.

In recent years, Marie Christine has accompanied John on his tough, always demanding adventures overseas. On the latest of these, the family decided to adopt Elizabeth Berg Huaman, a six-year-old Quechua Indian girl from the Peruvian jungle whose murdered father had saved John’s life on the Amazon fifteen years before. The story of this adventure is told in John Ridgway’s book Road to Elizabeth.

In No Place for a Woman (the title refers to Ardmore itself), Marie Christine recounts the story of her extraordinary life, her deepest feelings and aspirations as well as her adventures. But most of all, it is the story of a small brave girl from the jungle beyond the High Andes of Peru and her courageous struggle to adapt to her new life and family. It is a remarkable story told by a remarkable woman.

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