Why do some big successful brands go bust?

Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt.

I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype.

They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time.

And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to owners

and employees to ask what can we learn. It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just couldn't

survive. Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds. Today's subject is a great traveller, a cyclist who grew up in Ireland where she was born in

1931.

On her 10th birthday, her grandfather gave her an atlas.

She drew what was to her the obvious conclusion.

Some two decades later, she began her journey with a bike, starting at Dunkirk, an adventure she wrote up in a book called Full Tilt, and it's a classic.

There was one thing I wanted to do in the course of my life, and that was cycle to India.

And I was 10, and I'd just been given second-hand bicycle for my 10th birthday

and an atlas by my grandfather.

And I had discovered, not being very good at geography yet,

but I just discovered that you could cycle all the way from Europe into India.

What a voice and what determination too.

That was the late Der Vler Murphy, today's subject, and a previous guest on this programme.

She's been picked today by my guest, Hilary Brat.

Tell me, did you know Derbler yourself?

I knew her well. I met Derbler in 1979 in what she calls a Doss House in Ecuador, in Ottvalo.

She was coming back from her Peru trip.

...