Travel Tales From Beyond The Brochure

Whoop, a new podcast episode. I have my laptop back, so technology-wise I've returned to the 2020s. This episode isn't about travel; rather it follows on in a way from my earlier pod on Sexuality while travelling, and looks into more detail about own sexuality. Ace Week - Asexual Awareness Week - was at the end of October, and yes I'm therefore a bit late with this, but this episode is all about a...

I'm back, after my laptop failed! This episode is about my experiences of beer around the world, about what sort of beer I like. I talk a bit in detail about the history of USA beer, but lots of other countries and styles are mentioned. It's the first of a two-parter on alcohol; my next episode will be on 'things that are not beer'. But I imagine there'll be some mention of beer even so; it's hard...

It's not been a while since my last pod ... This is another pod partly about the history of Yorkshire. I give a very quick overview on The Wars Of The Roses, the civil war that took place in England in the mid-late 15th Century between the royal houses of Lancaster and York. Before I get onto that, however, I talk about numbers stations and give quite a bit of information about how to encode messa...

It's been a while since my last pod - thank you for bearing with me. I talk a little about why at the start of the episode, as well as the usual 'this is what I've been up to' overview and update. I've decided to do another geographic/history episode this time, I talk a bit about the county of Yorkshire, in northern England - specifically I go into detail about the city of Ripon, the town of Hawor...

So, in a follow-up to last week's "Beginner's Guide to Protesting", this week I'm bringing you an episode of three examples where the act of protest has helped to change the world. Or at least, change aspects of the British political system - just to show it can happen here just as much as it happens everywhere else. I give an overview of three events - the 1832 Reform Act, the Battle Of Cable Str...

It's a very strange time at the moment, for all manner of reasons, and it's an especially odd time to be running a travel podcast. So ... I'm not. This is the first of a two-part episode all about protest and direct action. Next week I'll be going to back to "Storytime" with tales of times when direct action in the UK has successfully changed society, culture, or the government. This episode, howe...

This week's podcast episode is all about the history of Apartheid in South Africa, from Cecil Rhodes' rule in Cape Colony in the 1890s all the way to Nelson Mandela's presidency a century later. I would at this point talk a bit more about the pod, but there are more important things to talk about right now, which are unfortunately related. While Apartheid itself might be history, racist feelings a...

This week's podcast episode is all about Travel Privilege. That is to say, the advantages that people have that they may not realise, which are accrued by virtue of their background rather than anything they've worked at to obtain. This covers subjects such as passport privilege - how holding certain nationalities makes travelling much easier - and of course skin colour, and how it's far easier fo...

This week's podcast episode, brought to you from a slightly damp Sheffield, is all about whether travel changes depending on how old you are - if the way you travel at the age of 20 is the same as the way you travel at, say, 40, in terms of travel style, accommodation, food, destinations, etc. I don't talk a lot about travelling at ages older than I am, but you get the drift. Most of it is compari...

Spring is in the air, and the weather's getting better. Unfortunately we're all stuck at home, unable to do anything but the merest bits of very local travel. For that reason, maybe you should come away with me on a virtual exploration of all things Scotland. The scenery, the food, the wildlife, the history, and almost no mention of midges or rain at all. I promise. Contributions this time are fro...

Hello from lockdown! This episode gives an overview of what I found when I visited the Outer Hebrides of Scotland last summer for a couple of weeks. It's the first in another two-parter; next week will look more at Scotland in general, including a couple of contributions from Tweeps about the Hebrides. This episode is another one of those which is purely my voice. I go over some of the highlights...

So, it's April 2020, and all those plans you had for this year, all those places you were going to travel to, all those experiences ... but yeh, we still have hope, right? This episode takes a look at travel hopes, at what we think the future of travel will be, and where we hope to go once all this is over. [I also have a slight rant about yoga, but humour me!] I make a reference to Jess (The Crow...

Bonus content! As you may recall, a few episodes ago I had a long chat with Alexei, from Travelexx about, well, primarily luggage, but we ventured onto many different subjects, one of which was sport - hence my previous regular episode. However, that episode ended up being more about travelling for sport, rather than about sports in general, so none of the content crossed over. I thought it might...

While virus protection is keeping a large proportion of the world's population indoors and isolated, I thought it would be good to have an episode looking at a subject noted for community, good vibes, and exercise - sport. I talk about a recent run I had where I got queried by police (but not for being outside!), then about places I've gone to to watch sports around the world, including football/s...

I wasn't sure quite what to record for this episode of the podcast, due to the changing situation in the world, so I pretty much sat in front of a blank screen and did a brain-dump, taking a couple of Twitter conversations I've had this week as an initial basis, and then expanding it with a few thoughts as I've gone on. I talk about three things really - the city of Sheffield, my mother, and my pr...

Following on from my previous episode on my own experiences of social anxiety and mental health, in this episode I let some of my Twitter followers and online friends talk about their experiences of mental health while travelling - how they mitigate for it, what helps them cope better, etc. I hope it helps you in some way, to know that if you have similar issues, you're not alone, far from it.

In a change from the previously advertised programme ... I was having a bit of a wobble in the previous week so I felt it would be a great time to discuss a couple of aspects of mental health, and how they affect me when I'm travelling. In this podcast episode then, I talk a bit about how I seem to have a form of social anxiety, what that means when I'm abroad, and what, if anything, I can do abou...

I've been acutely aware for a while that most of my podcast is me talking, despite my inclusion of contributions as vox-pops, so I've always fancied doing a bit of an experiment. Many other podcasts are either interview-based or are two or three people chatting amongst each other, and I wondered if I ought to try out the same style for an episode to see if it worked. The opportunity arose in casua...

What you take with you when you travel? Do you take just a carry-on bag? Or do you haul yourself through an airport with luggage galore? In this episode I talk about the fact I usually only ever travel with carry-on/hand luggage, and the advantages and disadvantages (or, rather, 'compromises') I face by doing so. There are, of course, some contributions from my friends who may or may not share my...

As per my previous episode, this is the second of two broadcasts about West Africa. This one is more about you though - the bulk of the episode is three contributions from some of my Twitter friends who have also been around the region, and they've given me their observations and thoughts. Their experiences were also generally different from mine - one person studied there for a year, while anothe...

West Africa. It's not a region that is high on the list of many backpackers, and I think that's a real shame as there's so much here of interest. I've recently been posting blog posts and written a travelogue about the adventures I had in the region a few years back, so it made perfect sense to do a podcast on it too. This is the first of two episodes about the region though, as when I was writing...

This is the second of a two-part discussion on borders; the first, in the previous episode, centred on experiences of crossing borders, whereas this pod talks more about borders in general, about how some borders don't really exist, and about what borders mean to the people on the wrong side of them. It's quite a political, opinionated, and forthright episode with not as much of the humour as prev...

If you travel, the chances are you'll cross a border at some point, even if it's just as simple as going from one local authority area to another. Yet borders are important and significant lines on the map, and even the smallest can be notable. Borders have always fascinated me, as they're at 'the edge', so everything beyond them can be seen as 'new', and 'shiny'. In this podcast, I talk about my...

As you may know, I've been away much of the summer, walking across Great Britain with my hiking buddy Becky the Traveller. This episode of my podcast gives an overview of the hike, including: * preparations * gear * routing * how the hike went * things that went wrong * the countryside we passed through * feelings after I finished, the 'what now's. It's an unusual episode, as there's no input from...