An employee from the Barnes Wetland Centre, known as the “Swan woman” is travelling 7,000km over 11 countries to follow “one of nature’s greatest migrations.”

Sacha Dench is preparing to depart for the Artic, as she embarks on a journey to join Bewick’s swans on their breeding grounds.

Ms Dench has four years of paramotoring experience and eight years of paragliding expertise under her belt, and has a day job as head of media at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT).

She aims to discover the reasons why the number of Bewick’s swans in Europe has halved in recent years, something that has puzzled conservationists. 

The public will get a chance to see Ms Dench depart from the Barnes Wetland Centre on Thursday August 25, including a glimpse at the paramotor rig (a paraglider with a propeller on her back) that she will use to follow the swans.

Speaking about the expedition, Ms Dench said: “I’m feeling very confident. Obviously it’s a major expedition.

"We’ve done a lot of testing and I’ve been flying for a few years already.”

This is not the first expedition that has been organised to find out more about the breeding of Bewick’s swans.

In the summer of 1991, two British women travelled to northern Russian Tundra to try and discover more about the swans.

The expedition was completed by Dafila, daughter of Sir Peter Scott and WWT’s Bewick’s expert, Eileen Rees, with the help of their Russian colleagues.