DIVORCE halts one in three marriages, and while for most it signifies an ending, former Oxford secretary Rona Cant experienced a ‘rebirth’ which sent her on adventures most of us only dream about.

‘Cant’ is an ironic surname for the mature (she won’t give her age) mum-of-two living in Oxford’s Summertown.

In the last 11 years she has sailed around the world – the wrong way – come into close and unwanted contact with a Canadian cougar, and more recently made an 11-day ‘impossible’ Arctic trek on a dog sled.

But she says all of these adventures would have remained pipe dreams if she hadn’t risen to her hardest challenge, back when she was an ordinary housewife.

“It was 1990, and I was in an unhappy marriage,” she said.

“I’d grown up with a father who told me I could do anything, but found myself married to a man who thought I should stay at home with the children and be content to be controlled.

“Don’t get me wrong – I don’t blame my husband and I really believe he was just doing what he thought was right. Getting divorced was devastating. But I had to do it for my own salvation.”

Rona also decided she and her children would move from London to Oxford.

“We had had a great life, but we were basically all just existing inside the M25 and never leaving,” she said.

Life soon improved – Rona was working for Oxford Brookes University as a PA and the children settled and made friends – but she soon felt in a rut.

“One night, a friend and I were having a glass of wine and she suggested I try sailing.

“I’d never sailed anything, but loved the idea and soon after took the children to Turkey on a dinghy sailing course, which they hated, but got me hooked.”

She then took a competent crew course and it was there that someone suggested she try to get on the BT Global Challenge Round the World Yacht Race. “Right away I was kind of zapped by the idea and thought, ‘Wow! Yes, why not?’ “I found out more and eventually ended up sitting in front of the famous sailor Sir Chay Blyth telling him why I wanted him to give me one of just 180 places on this amazing four-yearly race.

“He asked me lots of questions and then went off on some tangent and I rather too excitedly said: “So am I on one of the yachts then?

“Luckily for me, he loves to give ordinary people the chance to do amazing things and said: “Well, you’re certainly gung-ho enough, so why not?”

Rona’s son Simon and daughter Nicola were “flabbergasted”.

“They thought their dear old mum didn’t stand a chance,” she said.

Much training followed, but to cut a long story short, Rona was part of the 18-strong crew of one of the Challenge yachts in the 2000/01 race.

She said: “I left my job at Oxford University and celebrated the millennium sailing around Cape Horn.

“It was thrilling, in bad ways as well as good. At one point just out of New Zealand one of the other yachts crashed into us and rode up over our deck – I thought we were all goners.

“But I was finally living in the moment, I felt I could do anything and I came back more confident – but completely unemployable!”

No longer able to “operate in an office”, Rona joined a challenging wilderness trek in Canada.

But she still had her sea legs and was evacuated, injured, while the hungry wildlife looked on.

“After that I thought: ‘Oh my God, what do I do now?’”

By chance she was walking into Oxford one day and met a graduate she knew.

“She told me she was trying to get sponsorship to do a dog sledding trek in Lapland. I thought it sounded fun and signed up.”

But dog sledding didn’t possess the immediate appeal that sailing had.

“After coming around a mountain bend with one dog runner in the mid-air and the sled on its side virtually out of control I got off and said: “Never again.”

Nevertheless, just 24 hours later she found herself seated next to the formidable Norwegian dog-sledder and adventurer Per-Thore Hansen.

“He told me he was thinking of sledding from Norway 600 kilometres to Nordkapp, the most northerly point of Europe. It had never been done before but I heard myself telling him to let me know if it went ahead.”

In 1994, after taking part in a yacht race around Britain and Ireland, which her team won, Rona got a call from Hansen inviting her to attempt ‘the impossible’.

While most people her age are choosing new gardening gloves, Rona was choosing gloves to combat minus 30 temperatures – and preparing for an ordeal which would make dog sledding in Lapland seem like a walk in the park.

“I had a 120-kilo sled, Snow up to my thighs and extreme cold to content with,” she said.

“Each night we would crawl into our tents exhausted.

“On a yacht I always had someone to talk to. But you sled in a line and can’t hear a thing except the ice or snow below.

“There were white outs, storms – it was absolute hell. But the scenery was breathtaking and going at speed past herds of reindeer is out of this world.”

The book borne of this adventure, Snow, Sleds & Silence – The Story of the Nordkapp Expedition, is now published through Libri Publishing and Rona recounts its many twists and turns in her motivational speaking.

But she hasn’t been without her doubters – including her own family.

“My mum thought I was selfish to do the Challenge race and leave the children – but she died before I did it.

“The kids thought I was mad – but I think they were probably more miffed at losing their housekeeper and taxi driver.

“Others are more impressed – like my postman. He’d never spoken to me at all but one day he said he’d heard me being interviewed on the radio.

“I think he saw me as just an ‘old biddy’ before then, but now he calls me Miss Cant.”

Rona’s next move is writing historical fiction – but she is not ruling out more roving.

“I can’t help it,” she says. “Some things just zap me and make me say, ‘Wow! I can do that’.

“I also love to tell others they can do whatever they want to.

“One woman told me I helped her start driving her life instead of just being a passenger – that was pretty wow, too.”