How one Yorkshire mum went from from crying in the biscuit aisle at Tesco to become the first woman to paddleboard coast to coast

At the age of 48, Jo Moseley found herself sobbing in the biscuit aisle of Tesco.

At the time she didn’t realise her sleepless nights, anxiety and ‘brain fog’ were all symptoms of the perimenopause. After a friend suggested exercise may offer some relief, Jo took up indoor rowing and has never looked back.

“My mum had recently died of cancer and I wasn’t sleeping very well due to stress and all manner of things and then I just lost it in the supermarket one day with my sons. So a friend suggested taking up rowing,” explains Jo, a mother of two from Skipton.

“I gave it a go and loved it. I started to sleep better almost straight away.”

She loved it so much she came up with the idea of an epic fund-raising challenge – to row one million metres (682 miles) – after her parents were both hit by cancer.

“I needed something that I could fit in around work and children so I came up with the challenge to row a million metres on a rowing machine. I think some people sponsored me as they felt sorry for me as they thought it was such a boring challenge, but I loved it.”

In the end Jo raised more than £10,000 for Macmillan. That was back in 2014 and it was not to be the end of Jo’s epic challenges.

She had always been a keen swimmer and was always on the look-out for new challenges, so she decided to learn to surf.

“I was absolutely hopeless at it,” she says. “But then I came across stand-up paddleboarding and I just loved it.”

She got a paddleboard for Christmas and then there was no stopping her. She came up with the idea of paddleboarding from Liverpool to Goole on the canal system.

“But I still wasn’t all that confident about my ability and then at a Christmas party someone said ‘won’t that be difficult for someone of your age?’ so I decided to park the idea.”

But then she heard about a man who was doing exactly the same thing as she had wanted to do and so, last year, she decided to resurrect her dream.

“Jason Elliot became the first person to paddle-board the 162 miles coast to coast and he became a real mentor to me,” says Jo. “Also in the years in between, I had said goodbye to too many friends my age, all wonderful, vibrant and inspiring women who died way too young. I realised life is too short and too precious not to go for our dreams and try and make a difference in the world.”

The challenge, named Paddleboard the North, last July took Jo 11 days – which meant standing on the paddleboard in a variety of weather for up to eight hours a day.

“The weather wasn’t great, we had a lot of rain and thunderstorms, but I had booked the time off work and so I had to go ahead with it. One of the biggest challenges was the amount of weed, I spent a lot of time on my knees fighting through it.”

Jo was raising money for two charities, The Wave Project and 2MinuteBeachClean community.

She also took the opportunity to litter pick along the way to raise awareness of pollution on our inland waterways, another thing she is passionate about.

“I have litter picked ever since David Attenborough’s Blue Planet 2, mainly on beaches but there is also a big problem on our canals.

“The locks were a bit tricky at times especially if I’d picked up a big box of litter which I had to carry along with my food.”

The challenge, which saw Jo become the first women to paddleboard coast to coast from Liverpool to Goole, was all filmed for a documentary due out soon. She even paddled home to Skipton in the dark using a head torch to guide her way.

“I wanted to be in Yorkshire on Yorkshire Day but missed it by a day,” says Jo, 55. “I was quite nervous about paddling at night, although I had navigated the Foulridge Tunnel, which is a mile long, so had some idea what it was like paddling in the dark, but it is actually really lovely. Lots of the narrowboats have fairy lights and it is so peaceful.”

During lockdown paddle-boarding became something of a craze.

“When I started out there really weren’t that many, now you see loads, but I always stress the safety to people.”

Jo has teamed up with the This Girl Can campaign in a bid to encourage more women in mid-life to take up exercise of some form.

“I find exercise has helped me deal with the menopause, really helping me sleep and combating anxiety. Then I cam across the This Girl Can campaign that just seemed to encapsulate everything I believed in.

“I was never one to go to gyms, I found them too intimidating but exercise has made such a difference to my life. Women have such potential.My hope is not that women will look at me and say, ‘wow, look what she did!’, but more, ‘I wonder if I could do something wild too. I wonder if I could make my dream come true.’”

Research has shown that nearly one third of women will drop off from regular physical activity during the menopause, despite the fact that for many the desire to remain active is still high.This Girl Can has helped inspire 3.9 million women to be more active and has addressed real life barriers to exercise.

The campaign now wants to shine a light on the menopause, an issue that affects all women and encourage more to be done to break the taboo surrounding it.

www.thisgirlcan.co.uk