The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

Your style of planning and booking trips is likely, it seems, to fall into one of two categories: a detailed planner (sometimes, incredibly, almost over-the-top detailed - in my humble opinion!) or a more spontaneous, make a few arrangements and then just see what happens.  In Episode 221 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast I speak with two travellers who are very dedicated to the detailed plann...

This crazy year, 2020, when everything about the world, and especially the world of travel, was turned on its head, is nearly over.  Phew - I think. Who knows, really, what 2021 will bring, but I think at least we're prepared to know that things are different, whereas this time last year we had not the faintest clue what lay ahead of us. In Episode 220 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, the fi...

It's Christmas time which - weirdly, I guess, since I live quite far down in the southern hemisphere! - makes me think about the North Pole, about snow, about cold climates. That made it feel an appropriate week for my episode about seeing the Northern Lights or aurora borealis - an incredible phenomenon I haven't had the chance to witness yet, but after hearing these four guests describe their si...

2020 is nearly over, and I know many people in the travel industry (and beyond) are breathing a sigh of relief over that. But what will the travel world look like in 2021? It's all a bit unknown but I wanted to chat with people who were on top of the research and could tell us more about what travel trends for 2021 are looking like. First up, though, I asked the Thoughtful Travellers Facebook grou...

The friends you make while you're travelling are, I think, often destined to be lifelong friends, because you've probably got a lot in common. If you're travelling in a similar way, or you're in the same destination, or however it is that you meet - you're already well on the way to a solid friendship. That's certainly my experience and I can think back over a long list of great friends I've made...

There are countless lessons we can learn from travel: from small to large, nice-to-know to completely life-changing. I'm sure that I'm a completely different person thanks to the things I have learnt while travelling - and hopefully a better one! In this episode of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast I chat with three guests who agree that we can learn a lot when we travel. First, I speak with Justin Me...

Paul Theroux returns! This episode is the second half of my interview with travel writer Paul Theroux - if you haven't listened to Episode 214 yet, go and do that first! In this final section, we talk about another widely-varied array of travel topics, including the magic of train travel, one of my very favourite ways to get around. We also chat about some cultural differences and discuss some of...

I'd need a time machine to be able to tell for sure, but I think that Paul Theroux's "The Great Railway Bazaar" was probably the very first travel narrative book I ever read. It shaped a lot about what I thought about travel - that you should talk to local people, that you should travel slowly, alone where possible, and not in a group of tourists, for sure - and it gave me quite an obsession with...

This special episode is the audio of the Facebook Livestream of the November 2020 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, talking about Down Under (aka In a Sunburned Country) by Bill Bryson. If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, all the info is at https://notaballerina.com/bookclub,  and you can keep up with all the thoughts about our current books in the Thought...

Over recent years, more of us have paid attention to ways in which we can travel a little more sustainably, and harm the environment a little less - but we still have such a long way to go. In Episode 213 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, I chat with three travellers who are also very concerned about the impact we are having on the environment, and have a wealth of tips and ideas to share with us....

Travelling is often fun but if you're travelling for a super-special reason like to get married - well, then that's even more fun! This episode of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast is full of amazing destinations and very special trips indeed. My first guest is Scott Antcliffe, who told me this story about his honeymoon in the Maldives - I loved his tale so much that it inspired me to find some other...

Quirky limestone pillars, Spanish street names, a barbecued pizza ... all this and more in our most recent trip. It's been a busy year - oddly enough! I was due a break, and I took my son off for four days to Cervantes, a couple of hours north of Perth. This had all the hallmarks of some of my favourite kinds of travel: slow travel (staying in one destination rather than moving around), finding th...

It's Episode 210, a nice round number so it's time for a special edition of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. As some of you may know, I've spent a fair bit of time working on my first book about thoughtful travel, and in this episode, I decided to tell you some stories from a particular section of my book that talks about how travel really helps us to understand the world better - in a way that no t...

Episode 209 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast was inspired by a chat I had with Rick Antonson a year or so back, who described a trip he'd taken in Canada with his ten-year-old grandson Riley. Since then I've been looking out for other stories of travelling with grandchildren and am excited to publish this episode with its three great tales. First up of course is Rick's story which began it all - a...

This special episode is the audio of the Facebook Livestream of the September 2020 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, talking about Step By Step by Simon Reeve. If you'd like to join the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, all the info is at https://notaballerina.com/bookclub,  and you can keep up with all the thoughts about our current books in the Thoughtful Travellers Facebook Gr...

We might not be travelling as far and wide as usual thanks to Covid-19 and our state's border closure, but my son and I have just had a quick getaway to a town a couple of hours east of Perth, and it is worth telling you all about! I'm a big fan of travel for random reasons, and this one was pretty random. The destination was dictated purely by my 10-year-old son, and meant we ended up staying nea...

My first creative love is writing, and it's exciting to me to be able to explore how my guests combine writing and travel in this episode about writing retreats around the world. First up, I chat with Suzanne Moore, a novelist who lives in Perth but took the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks completely alone in Japan to work on her book, in the scenic landscape of Hokkaido. Next, Catherine Ma...

In July 2025 reports were published by The Observer (UK) suggesting significant parts of Raynor Winn’s story are untrue. This is a really sad development for books that both I and my listeners have held dear. You can read the main Observer article at https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-real-salt-path-how-the-couple-behind-a-bestseller-left-a-trail-of-debt-and-deceit   This...

Episode 206 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast is a special one: for the first time, I'm doing a crossover episode with another podcast, because I'm sure it's one my listeners will love.  (Newsflash! We refer to Alpaca My Bags throughout this episode, but this wonderful podcast has been rebranded as "Curious Tourism" - a brilliant name!)   I chatted with Erin, the host of Alpaca My Bags, earlier in...

What turned you into a traveller? I've been pondering this question and in Episode 205 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast I chat with four travel lovers about the origins of their travel addiction. We start off delving back into childhood times to find some of the sparks that interested us in travel, and I speak first with Evan Petrelis. His particular entry point for learning about the world is qui...

Island life, island time, there are all kinds of phrases we use that evoke that special feeling of islands - be they tropical or otherwise, small islands are exotic places to visit and I've got such a long list of islands I've loved, and long to return to. Turns out I'm not alone and in Episode 204 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast, I chat with three guests about some of their own favourite island...

Travel can have a lasting impact at any age but if you’re a teenager and you’re away from your family on some kind of student exchange program then it’s even more likely to be life-changing, and Episode 203 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast looks at this idea in this episode about student exchange trips. First up, we hear briefly from Abby Lewtas who describes her experience as a...

It's wildflower season! The Western Australian border might be closed thanks to Covid-19, but the positive side of this is as a Perth resident I'm able to travel throughout our vast state - including some of the lesser-visited parts. In mid-August, I spent three days in Australia's Golden Outback chasing wildflowers with my friend Di, and we kept an audio diary of our time away. In this special ep...

This is the second part of my celebration of 200 episodes - today, the wonderful listeners you met in Episode 200 share some of their very favourite travel stories. And they're amazing! Lily takes us first to Indonesia, back when she was just sixteen - and she learnt a lot! Next, Jane tells us of an amazing part of Italy that had captured her imagination and then proved even better than she imagin...

It's a big milestone today: this is the 200th episode of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast! And since this podcast would literally be nothing at all without all my wonderful listeners, I've decided to devote both this week and next week to you all by interviewing some brave listeners who volunteered to record chats with me - from all corners of the globe - Melbourne to Norway, British Colombia to Engl...