Excess Baggage

Sandi Toksvig is joined by country singer Hank Wangford to hear about life on the ranch with paniolo cowboys in Hawaii. There is music from cellist Li Lu who is accompanied by artist Johan Andersson, her rival in a televised international busking competition. And Sandi talks to seasoned busker Kevin Barry White about life on road with just an accordion for company.

Sandi Toksvig explores Cape Town in the company of two very different experts. Lindsay Johns has family connections to the city and visits regularly. Bryan Tully is a forensic psychologist and has recently led a 'forensic tour' to South Africa. While mortuaries, hospitals and prisons feature on the tour, Bryan talks especially about his impressions of Cape Town. Sandi also talks to journalist Miranda Sawyer who has retraced both her footsteps and the train tracks of her youthful InterRailing adventures around Europe.

Producer Harry Parker, Chris Wilson

Sandi Toksvig meets journalist Colin Freeman who was kidnapped by pirates in Somalia whilst investigating them. He tells Sandi about how the total breakdown of law and order has led to piracy on the high seas and poverty on the land. David Edwards had barely arrived in Montserrat in 1995 when the volcanic eruptions took place that were to cover most of the island in ash. He went back 16 years later to see how life has changed for both visitors and residents. Language teacher Elisabeth Smith tells Sandi why the British are so bad at speaking foreign languages when travelling - and what they can do about it.

Producer: Harry Parker.

Sandi Toksvig looks at rites of passage with Anders Ryman who spent seven years photographing the ceremonies associated with key events in human life; birth, coming of age, marriage and death from Micronesia to Madagascar and Norway to Nepal. They are joined by author Sarah Murray who has travelled the world looking at rituals associated with death and Lucy Neville whose memoir of her time in Mexico includes her experiences of the Day of the Dead festival and the Saint of Death religious cult.

Producer: Harry Parker.

Sandi Toksvig looks at the simplicity and versatility of the bicycle as a travel machine with three very different cyclists. Susie Wheeldon rode 22,000 kilometres around the world, crossing deserts from Tunisia to Arizona, as she and her companions were researching solar energy. Robert Penn leads cycling weekends in the hills of the Brecon Beacons where the ups are as satisfying as the downs. And Matt Carroll recommends day trips in some of England's most beautiful countryside. Together they discuss the feeling of freedom realised in today's world by a device which hasn't changed its basic design for over 130 years.

Producer: Harry Parker.

Sandi Toksvig meets novelist Richard Gwyn and translator Peter Bush to discuss Catalonia and its relationship with Spain. She hears how life is changing there, not just in the big city of Barcelona but in the more rural areas near the Pyrenees. Sandi also talks about the Cornish coast with the historian and author Philip Marsden who has lived in the Falmouth area for many years and reflects on the role of the sea in the lives of the residents and visitors from the days of sail to the present.

Producer: Harry Parker.

John McCarthy talks to travel journalist Harry Bucknall about his journey round the Greek islands which vary from the crowded to the deserted and novelist Meaghan Delahunt reveals her love of Naxos an island less frequented by tourists. They discuss the appeal of the islands to the history lover and the holidaymaker.

John also meets the writer Jasper Winn who paddled his way around Ireland in a kayak. The journey led him to see his home island from a new perspective with its wild coastline, wildlife - and wild winds which on one occasion stranded him on an uninhabited island.

Producer: Harry Parker.

John McCarthy talks to three writers who have reported as freelancers from conflict zones. Lucy Morgan Edwards worked in Afghanistan both during and after the Taliban regime as an aid worker, journalist and election observer. Despite the risks she grew to love the country and its people. Benjamin Hall's thirst for front line journalism took him to Misrata in Libya at the height of Gaddafi's attacks on the rebel city and Oliver Bullough wrote from Chechnya as it struggled against Russian domination. They tell John about the practical difficulties and excitement of travelling in such dangerous places without backup.

Producer: Harry Parker.

John McCarthy meets poet and author Lavinia Greenlaw who tells him about the designer William Morris's journeys to Iceland in the 1870s and how what he saw informed his radical socialism. She also compares his experiences with her own trip there in the wake of the financial crash.

Producer: Harry Parker.

John McCarthy hears from architectural journalist Jonathan Glancey about the little visited state of Nagaland in north east India. Although concerned with buildings in his profession, Jonathan has returned several times to a land that has little of the built environment but much stunning mountain scenery - and the wildness of this frontier region gives it the air of a lost kingdom.

When Elizabeth Gowing went to Kosovo to live she found that one way to getting know this country of mixed cultures in the years after its civil war was through beekeeping. John talks to her about how she fell in love with a nation that is finding its feet in modern Europe whilst still holding on to the past - and honey.

John also meets Henry Iddon a British speed skier who grabbed the chance recently to go skiing in Iran where his experiences included the descent of a volcano.

Producer: Harry Parker.