From the region's coal mines to keel boats plying the mighty River Tyne and ships on the hunt for precious whale oil, shanties eased and animated working life in England's Northeast for centuries. Host Neil McQuillian heads up to Newcastle for a dose of salty sea-shanty culture, meeting a couple of guardians of this bawdy, moving and always rousing oral culture.

Thanks to our producers Femi Oriogun-Williams and Alannah Chance of Reduced Listening (reducedlistening.co.uk).

England’s Northeast: tall tales and sea shanties

A home for all the untold travel stories. In The Rough Guide to Everywhere we chat to people from around the world with inspiring travel tales to tell, and get the odd dispatch from Rough Guides writers on the road. The series is hosted by Rough Guides editor Aimee White (Twitter: @aimeefw). Use #roughguidespod to spread the word on Twitter. As featured on the BBC.

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Places & Travel

We’re crunching through the snow, leaping from jagged cliffs and going behind the scenes in the Rough Guide to Everywhere series finale. 

First off, we’re in South Georgia, an eyebrow-shaped island in the South Atlantic Ocean, where travel writer and Rough Guides podcast heavyweight Shafik Meghji shares stories from his expedition, from curious penguins to passing glaciers the size of the Isle of Man.

Then we whizz across to Mexico, where Rough Guides author Daniel Stables stumbled across the ultimate adrenaline rush. In the southwest city of Acapulco, daredevil residents enjoy a heart-palpitating tradition which goes all the way back to the 1920s.

That’s it for series four – make sure you listen to all the episodes and keep in touch on Twitter (@roughguides)! This series has been hosted by Aimee White and has been produced by Alannah Chance and Femi Oriogun-Williams for Reduced Listening (reducedlistening.co.uk).

Best spots on Earth

What is it that draws us to extreme travel? In our penultimate episode of series four of The Rough Guide to Everywhere podcast, we speak with the travel writer, filmmaker and storyteller, Ash Bhardwaj. Ash recently travelled the entire length and breadth of the Russian-European border – that’s 8500km, in case you were wondering – so we decided to find out exactly why he decided to take this travel venture to the extreme, and what travel means to him...

This episode was hosted by Aimee White (@aimeefw) and produced by Femi Oriogun-Williams for Reduced Listening (reducedlistening.co.uk).

Extreme travel with Ash Bhardwaj

When you think of Swedish traditions, maybe what comes to mind is fika, lagom or Midsummer’s Day celebrations. But there’s another, quite unique tradition that you may not have heard of before: kulning, otherwise known as cow-calling. 

In this episode, we find out exactly what kulning is, the social impact that it has had on the country and how what started as a local way of life in the Middle Ages has woven itself into modern music and life today. By preserving subcultures like kulning, we gain a real insight into how traditions are formed and how they develop over time. We discover so much about a particular place’s history, and from that, what is important to its people and why. 

This episode was hosted by Aimee White (@aimeefw) and produced by Femi Oriogun-Williams for Reduced Listening (reducedlistening.co.uk).

The art of cow-calling

What exactly is ‘responsible photography’? In this episode, we’re exploring how we can be more mindful when photographing a particular place or a person. We speak with the award-winning travel writer and photographer Lola Akinmade Åkerström, an expert on the subject, and photographer Hoda Afshar, who explains how new images can battle old stereotypes. 

Photography gives us the opportunity to peer into other people’s realities, understand and empathize with situations different to our own and listen to their stories, and present this in one powerful shot.

This episode was hosted by Aimee White (@aimeefw) and produced by Femi Oriogun-Williams for Reduced Listening (reducedlistening.co.uk).

Responsible Photography

Adventure writing has the ability to transport you to the place you’re reading about: taking in the unfamiliar script on a road sign, savouring sharp smells and fragrant tastes, basking in the hot heat and tingling in the freezing cold, feeling the rhythm of the music beating through the air. 

In this episode, we speak with author Maggie Ritchie, who travelled to Shanghai to research her new book, Bold Girls, in which two young Glaswegian women move to Shanghai at the turn of the 20th century. We also speak to reporter Jennifer Lin, who travelled from Philadelphia to Shanghai to trace the roots of her Chinese family, through the written words of her grandfather.

When we travel, we go in search of adventure – but along the way, we realise that it can also be found in the most surprising of places... 

This episode was hosted by Aimee White (@aimeefw) and produced by Femi Oriogun-Williams for Reduced Listening (reducedlistening.co.uk).

England’s Northeast: tall tales and sea shanties

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