Excess Baggage

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 walk through the jungle Tim also encountered a region riddled with post-conflict tensions and superstitions.

Photographer Marion Bull tells John about her travels usually made on her own to physically challenging places - in particular to the deserts of Algeria, where she is fascinated by rock paintings but is also drawn to the harsh and sometimes risky life among the Tuareg people.

And when life in a country becomes too risky for visitors, they may well call on their insurance company to repatriate them. John meets specialist Ted Jones who organises the evacuation of clients from political, medical or natural crises such as recent events in Libya, Egypt or Japan after the tsunami.

Producer: Harry Parker.

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 east coast of Africa and hears from author Isabel Losada how her quest for self knowledge induced her to take hallucinogenic drugs in the Peruvian Amazon. John asks them whether they write to travel or travel to write.

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 Hotel, takes a taxi tour of the opposing sections of the city and looks forward to developments in the arts attracting visitors. In South Armagh, John visits the first new hotel for 100 years in Crossmaglen, a notorious village during the conflict, hears a traditional music session or ceoltas and gets a panoramic view from a local beauty spot.

Producer: Harry Parker.

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 Wilson.

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.

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.

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 refurbished St Pancras Hotel with architectural expert Simon Bradley.

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 traveller Sally Mustoe about travelling around Turkey.

Producer Chris Wilson.

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 Expedition. Sandi also meets Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh and talks about another journey in someone's footsteps- in this case Raja's great uncle, who fled the Ottoman authorities in Palestine during the First World War and lived on the run for 3 years in and around the Rift Valley. Raja walks around many of the places that his relative lived whilst in hiding.

Producer Chris Wilson.