Eve Alderman has walked Britain and plans to scale Everest

The Courier

24-04-2025

Eve Alderman has a poster above her bed of Mount Everest, the peak she one day aims to climb.
And given what the 11-year-old has already overcome and accomplished, her parents Ian and Sarah are confident she will achieve her ambition soon.
Eve, from Stirlingshire, has already hiked the length of Great Britain and all 1,900 miles of Scotland's Great Trails.
She has inherited her parents' passion for the outdoors, and climbing and trekking expeditions form part of her home education.
But she's living a life of adventure Ian, 44, and Sarah, 41, once feared she would never see.
As a toddler she was given 48 hours to live after a tumour was found on her spine. What makes her achievements even more impressive is that she and Ian autistic.
And Sarah has also beaten cancer – diagnosed in a cruel twist of fate at the same time as Eve was being treated.
Ian and Sarah have always had adventurous spirits. They met at a climbing club. Ian served as an Army combat medic in the Middle East and is a former firefighter.
Sarah, a trained teacher, worked for Scottish Mountain Rescue and was an expedition leader and canoe and kayak instructor.
Their lives changed following Eve and Sarah's illnesses. But it allowed them to focus on educating Eve themselves.
And on enriching her life with the experiences which have shaped her ambition.
Ian recalls the harrowing time he and Sarah feared they would lose Eve.
'She was one at the time,' he said. 'The hospital called it regression. Instead of developing she was going backwards.
'She would have periods where she was crying and then she would be silent and you couldn't stir her.
'We were literally having to check she was still breathing.'
After repeated hospital visits where no diagnosis could be reached, a GP told them to take Eve straight to the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow.
Ian says: 'They admitted her and the ball started rolling rather rapidly.
'Eventually, after quite a lot of investigation, they found a tumour on her spine and said it was inoperable.'
'They gave her 48 hours at one point.
'While that was going on Sarah was going for some routine appointments.
'We didn't really think anything of it as we were too stressed over Eve.
'But that came back as cancer.
'So Sarah was going for her operations and then discharging herself early to come back to the children's hospital.
'It was a pretty crap time. We were planning funerals and the like.
'Luckily that never came to fruition. The surgery for Sarah and treatments they put Eve through worked.'
Ian gave up his business to focus on the family and Sarah was physically unable to continue her job with Scottish Mountain Rescue.
The couple had always wanted to home educate Eve and began planning for that. Now they work seasonal and part-time jobs to fit round her education and numerous expeditions.
Ian started a Facebook page and began documenting their family adventures in a blog, Our Spectrum Adventures.
Eve conquered her first Munro at the age of four.
She was eight when she became the youngest person to hike the length of Great Britain.
Walking from Dunnet Head to Lizard Point via John O'Groats and Lands End she raised money for the National Autistic Society.
Was it daunting taking a young child on such an audacious trip?
'The weak point was me,' Ian says, 'it was never Eve.
'Eve's like a machine.
'But when you are sat in March at the northern tip of Scotland, especially back then when the weather was particularly bad for that time of year.
'I remember just sitting in the tent with it being flattened by the wind, the waves crashing below, and crying and thinking 'what the hell have I got myself into this time?'
'But I think you need those moments to find yourself and push forward.'
Last year Eve and Ian were confirmed as the only people to have walked all 29 of Scotland's official long-distance trails.
Such expeditions form part of Eve's education.
As Ian and I speak on the phone Eve is practising maths in their Aberfoyle home. But Ian tells me they'll be backpacking around one of the Scottish islands just a few days later.
'It's quite remarkable what you can integrate into being outdoors,' he says. 'Like maths when you look at navigation and grid references, bearings and aiming off and all this sort of stuff.
'Obviously, there's a limit to what you can do when you're carrying your life on your back.
'So we do sit down at home and we do short division, multiplication, all that sort of stuff.'
Ian and Sarah believe the experiences they are giving Eve are far more valuable than she would get in school.
'At that age you can sit them down and get them to read and write, and we do all that. But it's also about discovering yourself and character building.
'A kid in school at a desk in front of a blackboard will learn stuff by rote but you need to find their interests and passions.
'If you find that, then they'll do whatever is required in order to achieve and succeed in that field.'
'If Eve decides she wants to be a doctor, or a vet, or a lawyer – it doesn't have to be something outdoors – then absolutely.
'If it means sitting down with text books at the kitchen table for the next four years then so be it.'
Their autism means that for both Eve and Ian outdoors is where they feel most at ease. That's despite the unknowns challenging their desire for predictability.
'We try to be as flexible as we can within the confines of the lifestyle choice and the autism, which requires more structure and predictability than people imagine.
'It's almost hypocritical to say that, because when we're outdoors and hiking it's anything but predictable.
'We have to find somewhere to camp and figure out what are we going to eat, blah, blah, blah, but it's different when we're outdoors.
'Outdoors and indoors are like two polar opposites.'
With Eve's Everest ambition a longer term target, the family are working towards goals closer to home meantime.
'We are planning bagging all the Munros,' says Ian.
'But we're also thinking about doing a full round of all the Scottish mountains because then that's a bit more of a challenge.'
A mountain is defined as any land over 1,969 ft. Scotland has more than 700.
'They're linking up sections of the Scottish coastline as well so we can start working our way round the coastline,' he adds.
'We always want to do something big.
'It's go big or go home!'