Anne Mustoe, Headmistress of Saint Felix School from 1978 to 1987 died on Tuesday, 10th November 10th in a hospital, in Aleppo (Haleb), Syria.

Daughter of HW Revill, she was born in Nottingham, the home of the Raleigh Bicycle on May 24th 1933.  She was educated at Nottingham High School and read Classics at Girton College, Cambridge.

Anne Mustoe was a wonderful example of someone who lived life to the full. She successfully combined a high-powered career with marriage and family life. When she married her husband, Nelson Edwin Mustoe QC in 1960, she inherited three step-sons, Nigel, John and Julian - who is a solo round-the-world yachtsman.  Her husband died in 1976.
During the period she referred to as her ‘old career’ she worked in industry - in personnel and management training with GKN, ran her own independent travel business and established a national reputation in school leadership and as an educationalist.  While at Saint Felix she served as the President of the Girls' Schools Association, the Chairman of ISIS, a Justice of the Peace in Suffolk and as a member of the Final Selection Board for the Foreign Office and Home Civil Service.

Anne Mustoe’s teaching career began at Francis Holland School, Clarence Gate where she taught Classics and Economics.  Later she became Deputy Head of Cobham Hall, Kent.  Her experience of teaching, administration and industry proved invaluable in dealing with the complex issues of leading a school and she was appointed to the Headship of Saint Felix School in 1978.  Mrs Mustoe was a Headmistress who commanded much respect from all those who had dealings with her – staff, parents, pupils and the wider community. 
Once established at Saint Felix Anne Mustoe saw one of her primary tasks to be the marketing of the school to a wider group of potential parents, particularly around London, who might wish their daughters to be educated at a boarding school in the country.  In the late 1970s the boys’ independent schools were beginning to open up their VI forms to girls and then this trend towards co-education spread to all year groups.  This meant that Saint Felix began to encounter stiff competition from these schools in terms of recruitment.  The day to day running of the school was delegated to senior staff to enable Mrs Mustoe to focus on the wider role of promoting the school. She toured the Gulf states in 1982 and took on roles such as Chairman of the Girls’ Schools Association and Chairman of ISIS to keep Saint Felix in the public eye. 
The VI form doubled in size between 1977 and 1980. This meant that new boarding facilities for VI form boarders were required.  Nightingale was extended and the north end of Clough was converted into more UVI accommodation. The latter was named Thatcher House, not to reflect any political allegiance but because Margaret Thatcher was a female pioneer in her own field of politics as Florence Nightingale had been in nursing and Mary Somerville in mathematics.
An appeal was launched in 1982 to raise money to modernise the boarding houses.  Money to fund the refurbishment also came from gravel royalties. Improvements took place over the summer holidays - one house at a time. Modern comforts were introduced beyond the imagination of Old Felicians who, in earlier decades, had shivered their way through their school days.
Mrs Mustoe kept a close eye on the curriculum.  Her personal interest in Classics led to the strengthening of Latin teaching together with the re-introduction of Greek and she laid much emphasis on the traditional academic curriculum.  However she was fully aware of the ever increasing influence and likely impact of the ‘new’ technologies and, in 1985, work began on a two storey craft, design and technology building which stood boldly at the front of the school making a physical as well as a pedagogical link between departments such as science and art and music. 
During her headship Lord Inverforth, a governor, visited Saint Felix School, Koinambe, Papua New Guinea. The school had been founded by an Old Felician in 1961 and has been funded, in part, by its sister school in Southwold ever since. He returned with artefacts including a length of tapa cloth to make a dress for the headmistress.
In 1987, aged 54, Anne Mustoe resigned from her post –to embark on her ‘new career’ - and to cycle around the world.   She was inspired to do this by a trip to India in early January 1983. Somewhere in Rajasthan she looked out of the bus window and saw a cyclist, a solitary European man, pedalling across the immensity of the Great Thar Desert. She said, ‘I was seized with sudden envy. I wanted to be out there myself on that road on a bicycle, alone and free, feeling the reality of India, not gazing at it through a pane of glass.’  It was the bicycle which had immediate appeal. ‘I made up my mind that morning that I would cycle across India. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I should stop at India. While I was at it, why not cycle round the world?’

Pupils were always highly entertained in Assembly when Anne read extracts from Oggi about female travellers in remote locations. One of Anne’s favourite stories was about Freya Stark and the importance of being prepared to eat baked lizard when travelling in remote areas of the Atlas mountains and Sahara. Even while she was Headmistress at Saint Felix, Anne was obviously inspired by the tales of other women who had embarked on hazardous journeys in remote areas.

When Anne Mustoe set off to cycle alone round the world, from west to east in May 1987, she was in her own words ‘54, overweight and unfit’. She had not cycled for 30 years and she wobbled on her new machine.  The bicycle which Anne received as a farewell gift from the Saint Felix pupils was a sturdy Condor, customised especially for her by Monty who had a workshop on the Old Kent Road. Whenever she returned to London after one of her expeditions, Monty would service it and she was still using that same bicycle in Syria before she was taken ill.
She was waved off in London by a crowd of friends and well wishers and the girls at the school shared in this great adventure by plotting her progress on a large world map via the postcards that their past headmistress forwarded to them. She began by travelling the well engineered Roman roads through Europe and then followed on in the footsteps of Alexander the Great towards the far East.
From her initial world trip came her first book, called simply ‘A Bike Ride’. Other ambitious cycling trips followed and were steadily documented in a series of very readable and interesting books including: 
• A Bike Ride: 12,000 Miles Around the World
• Lone Traveller: One Woman, Two Wheels and the World
• Two Wheels in the Dust: From Kathmandu to Kandy
• Amber, Furs and Cockleshells: Bike Rides with Pilgrims and Merchants Cleopatra's Needle: Two Wheels by the Water to Cairo
• Escaping the Winter
• Che Guevara and the Mountain of Silver: By Bicycle and Train through South America
Anne Mustoe’s travel books became very popular and, as a result, she became well known as a travel lecturer.  When not actively cycling and gathering material for her next book she lectured to prestigious groups such as the Royal Geographical Society, to lecture associations, travel clubs, cycling groups, W.I. groups and luncheon clubs all over the country.  Anne gave numerous talks in East Anglia in which she always claimed that all she needed with her in her saddle bag was ‘a little silk number’ which would not crease and then she would be prepared for any eventuality.

Anne set out on her last cycle trip in May 2009.  Sadly we can no longer plot her progress around the globe.  We can however salute her as a great headmistress of Saint Felix School and admire her determination and resolve to break with her old career and launch herself into something entirely new but deeply challenging and immensely rewarding.
Anne Mustoe is survived by her three stepsons.