By BBC Radio 4
Travel magazine, featuring travellers' tales, experiences and anecdotes
John McCarthy looks at Liberia and Sierra Leone with journalist and author Tim Butcher who retraced a journey without maps made by Graham Greene in 1935. The dangers of heat and disease are still there but on his 350 mile...
John McCarthy talks to journalist AA Gill about his travel columns which have taken him from earthquake zones to retirement homes and polar regions to Civil War sites. He also meets novelist Wilbur Smith who reflects on piracy off the...
John McCarthy visits Northern Ireland where he stays in two contrasting hotels and hears about different approaches to tourism after the troubles. In Belfast he talks to the owner, the concierge and a famous guest of the much bombed Europa...
John McCarthy explores the pleasure of moonlight, talks to a musician who travelled the world with her harp and meets someone who spent 5 years in the solitude of a remote Welsh cottage without electricity or running water. Producer Chris...
John McCarthy hears from a bestselling thriller writer about his travels around The Philippines, finds out about a series of new walks in Ireland and talks to someone seeking inspiration from a pilgrimage across Spain. Producer: Chris Wilson.
Sandi Toksvig finds out about Nigeria with actor and director Femi Elufowoju Jr and novelist Christie Watson, and gets under the skin of Montreal and Newfoundland with writer Kathleen Winter. Producer: Chris Wilson.
Sandi Toksvig explores Morecambe Bay and the area round about and talks to a travel journalist about her love of India and places to visit near Sheffield. Producer: Chris Wilson.
Sandi Toksvig finds out about Georgia on the Black Sea with novelist Meg Clothier, hears about a motorbike trip around Australia's Highway 1 with biker and travel writer Geoff Hill and examines St Pancras Station in London and the newly...
Sandi Toksvig finds out about modern day Harlem in New York and looks at travel in Turkey. She talks to New Yorker Reggie Nadelson about one of the city's most exciting neighbourhoods and to historian Professor Norman Stone and independent...
Sandi Toksvig explores two very different sides of the Antarctic. One from an expedition cruise ship and the other following the 2008/9 expedition following in the footsteps of Ernest Shackleton's failed bid for the South Pole on the 1907/9 Nimrod...
John McCarthy explores some ancient monuments and places of interest across Syria. He also hears about the Turkish baths- or Hammams- of Damascus and Aleppo. And travel along the backbone of England - the Pennines. Producer Chris Wilson.
John McCarthy explores British Woodland and meets a fan of travelling in cold landscapes. He hears about ancient woods across the country and about Iceland and the Scottish islands. And he examines myths associated with trees and woods in Anglo-Saxon...
John McCarthy talks to travel writer Colin Thubron about hiking up a sacred mountain in Tibet and to members of an expedition that explored communities around the Atlantic Ocean's coast, from Africa to the United States. Producer Chris Wilson.
John McCarthy explores Romania with William Blacker who lived there for some years and Lucy Mallows who wrote the first travel guide to Transylvania. He also meets Sarah Outen, who rowed 4,000 miles single handed across the Indian Ocean. Producer: Chris...
John McCarthy explores the Vladimirka Highway in Russia and talks to the writer who travelled along it from Moscow to Siberia. John also talks to two historians about visiting places associated with war - in particular the Second World War...
John McCarthy explores the wild coasts of Suriname, French Guiana and Guyana in South America and examines the pleasures and pitfalls of travelling and volunteering abroad. Producer: Chris Wilson.
John McCarthy explores the Great Northern Coalfield in North East England with writer Peter Crookston and meets the young family who travelled 4,000 miles across Africa in 2 months. Producer: Chris Wilson.
John McCarthy explores Paris with Independent Newspaper correspondent John Lichfield and The Lebanon with photographer Max Milligan and historian Philip Mansel. Producer Chris Wilson.
John McCarthy talks to the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell about his enthusiasm for hiking in Tasmania and Madeira, glaciologist Richard Sale about long distance walking routes in Europe and to photographer Jason Florio and his partner Helen Jones about...
Peter Curran presents an Excess Baggage special quiz for Christmas from the Radio Theatre with John McCarthy and Sandi Toksvig and their special guests, explorer Benedict Allen and comedian Lucy Porter, answering questions on the world of travel and travelling...
Anita Anand looks at the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office around the World with the Director of FCO Consular Services Julian Braithwaite. She also talks to Professor Jim Al- Khalili about his travels in the Middle East. producer....
Anita Anand explores pilgrim routes from Canterbury to Kerala and meets Tony Giles, the blind and severely deaf traveller, who has undertaken two solo trips around the world. Producer Chris Wilson.
John McCarthy looks at endangered peoples of the world with broadcaster and traveller Piers Gibbon who has stayed with South American tribes and studied their use of plants. This has lead him to taking part in their rituals involving poisonous...
John McCarthy meets the human rights advocate Bianca Jagger and asks her about a lifetime of travel from her home country of Nicaragua and student protests in the Paris of the sixties to her recent work in the state of...
John McCarthy looks at travelling to Yemen. Ginny Hill of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and travel writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith debate the delights and dangers of this ancient land; these days seen in the west as a source of...
John McCarthy meets ophthalmologist Lucy Mathen who runs an organisation performing cataract operations in north east India and Andrew Ready who leads a team transplanting kidneys in Trinidad and Ghana. He asks them about operating in less than ideal conditions...
John McCarthy meets Dr Lavinia Byrne who leads tours to the ancient sites of Syria and tour operator Amelia Stewart who has started to offer trips there and talks to them about why the many layers of its past make...
John McCarthy talks to journalist Clive Aslet about the nature of British villages, how they've changed and whether they have become places to visit rather than to live and work in. He tells John some of the stories associated with...
John McCarthy talks to Doreen Tayler who explored northwest India visiting places featuring in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim. The trail lead her to places that defied her expectations, from strange rituals on the Pakistan border to the summer capital of...
John McCarthy talks to the chair of The Royal Society for Wildlife Trusts, Michael Allen, about great writing on the British countryside and how the Trusts are encouraging people to get out of town and become involved with conservation pursuits....
The actress Imogen Stubbs talks to John McCarthy about why she is drawn to the Alaskan wilderness. Her experiences there with the vast distances, the extreme weather and the danger from encounters with bears contrast strongly with the relatively safe...
John McCarthy meets Dani Maimone who was Africa's only female hot-air balloon pilot flying over the Masai Mara giving her passengers a fantastic view of the wildlife below. She tells John of the pleasures and perils of balloon safaris. ...
Sandi Toksvig meets two people who travelled to research their family histories. Television executive Martin Davidson knew his German grandfather must have fought in the Second World War but was shocked when he discovered him to have been a member...
Sandi Toksvig uncovers some interesting English places of worship to visit, finds out why a retreat can be an excellent break and explores some of the locations painted by Sir Winston Churchill in the company of his granddaughter, Celia Sandys....
Sandi Toksvig explores deep under the skin of the 'sunshine state' in the company of the former British Vice Consul in Orlando Hugh Hunter, with a Florida postcard from Americana presenter Matt Frei. And she travels further a field to...