IT was in this week 130 years ago that Isobel Wylie Hutchison was born. She would become one of Scotland ’s most celebrated women of the 20th century, a poet, author, explorer, painter, polyglot and above all, a travel writer extraordinaire who lived into her 90s.

Born on May 30, 1889, in the family seat of Carlowrie Castle to the west of Edinburgh, Isobel was the daughter of the wealthy Thomas Hutchison of the famous Leith wine-importing family. Her mother Jeannie Wylie came from a successful farming background and both parents took a hand in the education of young Isobel until her father died when she was only 10.

Isobel was sent for formal schooling in Edinburgh and as a teenager she seems to have mapped out her life, taking ever longer walks and writing poetry, some of which was published by The Scotsman, among others, and contributing to the family magazine, The Scribbler, which she edited. She had a natural talent for languages and learned Gaelic, Greek, Italian and Hebrew before she left school. Later she would add Danish, Icelandic, Greenlandic and even some words in the Inuit language.

Though a legacy from her father made her comfortably off, Isobel decided to make something of herself, eschewing marriage. She began to write more poetry but her writing suffered due to tragedy visiting her in her 20s. She suffered the loss of two much-loved brothers, Frank and Walter, the former killed in a climbing accident in 1912 and the latter killed in action during the First World War.

Towards the end of the war Isobel went to Studley College in Warwickshire to study a range of subjects including botany, at which she was already a self-taught expert.

In the early 1920s, Isobel began a series of long walks across Scotland, sometimes with her elder sister Hilda but often on her own, before making the expedition that would change her life – a 1925 walk around Iceland that led to an astonishing 30-page feature in the National Geographic magazine, and saw her bring back a few rare plant species.

Isobel now became determined to go even further north and managed to gain permission to travel to Greenland, her visa granted after she was supported by the Royal Horticultural Society. From July 1927 to August 1929 she trekked across Greenland, meeting many local people and making friends with them.

Her account of her travels, On Greenland’s Closed Shore, was published by Blackwoods of Edinburgh in 1930 and was immediately recognised as a classic piece of exploration and travel writing. Her stories featured widely in the press – The Times became a big supporter – while her samples of plants and native hand-made goods were snapped up by museums in the UK and particularly by the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh where some of her collected materials are still stored.

Her paintings of the scenes of her adventures were also very popular and made useful accompaniments to the many talks and lectures she was asked to give, featuring regularly on the BBC for some time after her return to Scotland.

Even on her travels Isobel was still writing poetry, and the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh has a collection celebrating her life and poetic works. They chose this stanza to show her worth as a nature poet: “Here is a list of inconsidered things Whose names recall a thousand Scottish springs.

The buxom elm-flower in her satin kilts, The red-tailed willow-catkin that uptilts Her fingers for the other catkin’s pollen; The golden saxifrage all wet and fallen With one foot in the burn.”

Her next big trip after Greenland was to Alaska where she went in 1933, staying for six months in various towns and settlements before returning in early 1934, part of the journey being accomplished by aeroplane. She found the whole region to be fascinating and in 1936 she returned north, this time to the Aleutian Islands where she gathered dozens of samples of rare plants, many of them never seen before in the UK. That same year she travelled to Japan and China and returned via the Trans-Siberian railway, while in 1938 she wrote a rare story of life in Estonia.

During the Second World War, Isobel Hutchison penned several accounts of Scotland for National Geographic and after the war she began her travels again, this time to warmer climes such as Italy.

St Andrews University awarded her an honorary degree in 1949. The citation stated that she had contributed much to the collections of rare plants in Britain’s botanical gardens and to the literature of Arctic travel, but above all that she displayed “that indomitable spirit which defies hazard, danger and discomfort, and is the source of all great human achievement”.

She continued to travel at home and abroad until well into old age, but found her activities limited by arthritis.

Isobel’s home, Carlowrie Castle, is now a very successful hotel set in its own grounds which are adorned by many of the plants that Isobel brought back from her travels, including several rare species. Working tirelessly in the grounds and the glasshouses, Isobel Wylie Hutchison lived there until she died on February 20, 1982, aged 92.