The Big Travel Podcast

The Drake Passage is one of the most treacherous seas and Jamie Douglas-Hamilton and team rowed from South America to Antarctica, breaking 9 world records and resulting in the incredible documentary The Impossible Row for Discovery+. Inspired by his adventurer grandfather Jamie previously rowed from Australia to Africa. He’s endured towering waves, cuts down to the bone, sea sickness, land sicknes...

India Hicks’ Bahamas British Christmas, Charles Spencer’s quirk Christmas at Althorp, Victoria Hislop’s Cuban disaster, Cynthia Stroud’s noise in Nigeria, Eulanda Shead Osagiede getting drunk with Granddad in Colorado, Ella Al Shamahi’s jellied fish in Poland, Bill Bailey in remote Indonesia, Paul Burge on the epic Spanish Christmas, Danielle Desir in Connecticut, Dr Hassan Shehata partying with t...

Ella Al Shamahi is an archaeologist, explorer and stand-up comic who's been described as the 'real-life Lara Croft' as she travels the world exploring some of the world’s most dangerous and remote regions. Ella talks about her Channel 4 show exploring lost kingdoms of the Amazon, growing up in a conservative Yemeni community in Birmingham, getting herself into scrapes with terrorists, stolen DNA,...

Rachel Gotto was pregnant with her first child when she saw her husband's body hauled from the sea on a diving trip. What follows is an extraordinary journey recovering from a supposedly terminal brain tumour, paralysis, re-learning to walk and overcoming agoraphobia before becoming an acclaimed Rapid Transformational Therapist and Clinical Hypnotherapist. She travels the world giving inspirationa...

TV baker and food judge Cynthia Stroud grew up in Nigeria, learning budgeting from her grandfather being paid in chickens and goats and about baking from her mother. In the UK she went from living off £10 a week, to running her million pound cake-making business, Pretty Gorgeous Cake Co, and being honoured by the Queen. Her charity Jedidiah UK supports people left in poverty due to the Covid-19 pa...

From Rosslare Harbour in Wexford, Ireland, Samantha Kelly is the founder of global Women’s Inspire Network. We talk about inspiring female entrepreneurs, the people who have inspired us, arriving by boat to Ireland on the way to the Seychelles, working as a waitress in a Hong Kong Irish Pub, the joys of dancing on bars, the joys of Irish pubs, getting engaged in New York and how the human connecti...

Earl Spencer, best-selling author and historian, has a superb talent for bringing history to life. His new book, The White Ship, explores England’s worst ever maritime and royal disaster, a tragedy that changed the course of European history. From childhood trips to unknown Ibiza, friskings at the Russian border to covering everything from Cannes to Cairo as a news reporter, the late Princess Dian...

The year is 2505. The oceans have risen. A new era of piracy has dawned…Justin Somper’s vision of a future world in the bestselling Vampirates books has been very much influenced by his passion for Australia, which has lead to much exploring and also even his recent wedding on the beach. In the rain. As well as Australia we talk New York’s Studio 54 and Broadway, Washington DC’s homophobic hostel...

Loyd Grossman, entrepreneur, author and broadcaster is well-known for presenting MasterChef, Through the Keyhole & much more. His passion for history and the arts has led to leading roles many cultural institutions and impeccably researched books. Loyd and Lisa talk food and travel, growing up in a US seaside haven, hippy days in late 60s New York, playing with Jethro Tull and how an elephant in R...

Lemn Sissay, writer and poet, was taken from his Ethiopian mother at birth and after a stinging rejection from foster parents at 12 spent his childhood in care. He published his first book of poetry age 17 and sold it to striking miners in Lancashire. Although a large part of him will ‘always feel like that rootless kid’, poetry, he says, gave him wings and he began his travels not just around the...

A Place in the Sun presenter, Laura Hamilton, and Lisa are having coffee in the ‘new normal’ in Spain, masks at the ready, talking property abroad, bargain cave houses, lack of tourists in Spain, Greek idylls, making tea for Dermot O’Leary, getting stuck in Sri Lanka, nerve-wracking Egyptian taxi rides, galloping around the Pyramids in Cairo, skiing after C sections, becoming a postmistress, runni...

A school trip to Communist Russia left LBC’s Iain Dale hooked on travel. He’s since learned fluent German, been chased to the border by a Hungarian prostitute, was guarded at gun-point in Lebanon, has done things he doesn’t want to tell us in a Miami hotel and, as one of the UK’s foremost political commentators, feels Washington DC is almost an ancestral home. A humorous insight into the world we...

Pioneering expert Dr Hassan Shehata was thrown headlong into revolution, military Islamic extremism, beatings and torture as a junior doctor in Khartoum. We discuss his horrific time in ‘ghost house’ prisons, Sudan, Egypt, sitting on Bob Marley’s bed in Jamaica, Donald Trump and Hydroxychloroquine, following Liverpool FC around the world and his extraordinary work helping people become parents. Dr...

Award-winning travel and food blogger from Hey! Dip Your Toes In Eulanda Shead Osagiede grew up in Colorado, balancing beautiful forests and mountains with growing gang violence and police oppression, studied dance in New York then moved to the UK. We talk the Colonial history of travel writing, #BlackLivesMatter, the challenges of being a minority in a very white industry, Japan’s beautiful Kimon...

Growing up with two terminally ill siblings Francesca Eyre, chef & co-owner of Chilly Powder holidays, learned independence at a young age. A chance encounter when chasing her mother’s lost pearls led her to the mountains. As a part-time endurance athlete a terrifying accident led to a challenging recovery but together with her husband Paul she’s opening a second Chilly Powder in beautiful Provenc...

There aren’t many people who would correct George Clooney but, on his first film as an extra, this led to former paratrooper Paul Biddiss having a huge change in career from surveillance and bodyguard to Hollywood military adviser. He’s since worked with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Sam Mendes and more. He’s been chased by a baboon in Kenya, charged by elephants in the Masai Mara, wrangled huge snakes i...

The work of Kash Battacharya, the Budget Traveller, has won him National Geographic Traveller Writer of the Year, jobs for for Lonely Planet and the BBC and resulted in his book The Grand Hostels, Luxury Hostels of the World. Kash, in easing-lockdown Berlin, talks budget travel, culture shock from Kent to Calcuttta age 9, being ‘the English kid’ at a 18,000-pupil school, Dutch houses in Scotland,...

The fabulous Earful Tower Podcast, of which the star of the show is Paris, hit number one this month in the USA Apple podcast charts. Lisa chats to host Oliver Gee about seeing Paris like a local, chasing beavers down canals, catacombs, a moose on the loose in Sweden, grand Colonial hotels in Fiji, East African trucking on a shoe-string, great American road-trips, people who call you baby and suga...

With her impeccably researched historical novels, Victoria Hislop has the power to transport you through place and time. Her books have sold millions around the world and been translated into over 35 languages. A former travel writer she divides her time between Athens, Crete and England and the inspiration for her stories come from anything from a leprosy colony in the Greek Islands to Garcia Lor...

Searching for the quirk in the world cultural commentator Travis Elborough has explored topics as diverse as the history of the Routemaster bus, vinyl records, donkeys at the British seaside and pirates in the Caribbean. He recently collaborated with cartographer Martin Brown for The Atlas of Vanishing Places, winner of the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2020 illustrated book. For this epis...

Reporting on wildlife conservation, threats to eco-systems and fragile cultures from remote corners of the world is travel writer Sophy Robert’s passion. She cut her journalistic teeth with Jessica Mitford then ditched a job at Conde Nast Traveller to ‘tell those stories often untold’. She’s diced with danger in Papua New Guinea, protected elephants in Chad, fallen in love with the forests of the...

Three weeks ago we were in Malaga having tapas and wine with Bill Bailey and now that seems like a lifetime away as most of us around the world are in lockdown. Lisa talks about how the travel ban and lockdown is affecting her and people around the world and also speaks to Paul Burge from the When in Spain Podcast and Danielle Desir from the Thought Card Podcast who is in Bridgeport in Connecticut...

We’re in Malaga with superstar comedian Bill Bailey having tapas by the Cathedral. As well as being sublimely entertaining Bill is possibly the world’s most well travelled comedian and on this episode we talk childhood holidays, the Coronavirus, touring, languages, politics, birding, wildlife, Indonesia, moths, crazy car rides, free tea, dancing bears, growing up in the West Country, teenage bands...

Just 15 months after taking up wheelchair racing Mel Nicholls Team GB Paralympic cyclist, endurance wheelchair racer and adventurer, was at London 2012 before going on to Rio. Last year she nailed the London Marathon in under two hours and also broke the world record for hand cycling the whole length of Britain. She’s battled strokes, heart surgery, extreme weather and plenty of bad wheelchair acc...

Yes, we love travel, but how can we do this in the era of climate crisis? On this special episode, combining The Big Travel Podcast and WTM Insights podcast, Lucy Siegle, leading authority on environmental issues, examines the environmental impact of travel; the impact of tourism and aviation, what can travellers do to lessen this and what can the travel industry do to help. It’s an earnest one, b...