[3][4] In her youth she frequently walked and scrambled with one of her brothers on the limestone coast of Dorset where the family took regular holidays.

[7] Her working life from the 1930s, to her retirement in 1967, was spent at St. Godric's Secretarial College which had been founded by the mother of John Loveridge in Hampstead, north London and "still contained an element of upper secondary education".

[2] In 1959 she went to the himalaya as a member of the International Women's Expedition to Cho Oyu, 8,188 m (26,864 ft) and the sixth-highest mountain in the world,[10] and Darvall handled much of the pre-expedition arrangements.

[2] The all female team also included Loulou Boulaz from Switzerland, Dorothea Gravina and Eileen Healey from the UK, and the french mountaineers Claudine van der Straten, Jeanne Franco, Colette LeBret, Micheline Rambaud and Claude Kogan, who was the overall leader.

The party included Joan Busby (leader), Esmé Speakman, Mary Fulford and Eilith Nisbet and they undertook a number of climbs in the area around Bersærkerbræen.